The Fourth Regiment
by Zeronova
Summary: [FE7] The Justified: I ran my life on doing what I deemed right, even though I mostly did wrong. And yet, here I stand, not able to decide. Part two of four in The Fourth Regiment series.
1. The Moment

**Welcome to the _Fourth Regiment_ series! This is a series that examines some of the less-used elements of the F.E. series, and sometimes doesn't use much of anything, but only tries to tell a good story! They're assembled in four parts, all of them are self-serving entire entities, but all of them are linked in a rough fashion. They are gritty, harsh, and unforgiving, as well as willing to make you THINK. ******

**WARNING: For those who might be queasy about intense violence, harsh language, or sexual content, please do not read. It is not for the faint of heart, in any form.**

**Chapter 1: The Moment  
Chapter 2: The Justified  
Chapter 3: The Loyal (due soon!)  
Chapter 4: The Destiny (due soon after The Loyal!)  
**

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**_The Moment_ by Zeronova  
22,000 words / One-shot  
Posted on Friday, December 9th, 2005**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem 7: Rekka No Ken, nor will I ever. Nintendo owns it, and they do so with the sole goal of wasting my money, time, and life. They're good at it, too. Please do not use any of my ideas or story, unless you contact me and ask about it, and discuss it with me, and in that case, I'll be happy. I love to proliferate a sort of fan-continuity, so just contact me and it'll be fine.**

**This story is rated T. It contains mild language, and intense violence. Don't read it if you might be offended.**

**This story has been written with the express idea of trying something different. I am an irregular fan of Fire Emblem, but my long-time friend, Samuraiter, suggested I write something for FE. I did so with this one-shot. While it may be far from anything normal in the section, I heartily encourage you to give it a shot. I sincerely hope you enjoy the story, and if you do read it, please leave a review. Thank you, and happy reading! - Zeronova**

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They say that in your last moments, your life flashes before your eyes. Every single moment, emotion, smile, and tear shed, is relived once again before you die. I say it's a lie. In your greatest moment, the moment you were born for and the very few seconds why you live, your mind retraces itself. How did you get to that battlefield, squaring off with a bitter enemy, and that haggard smile curling your lips? What events brought you here to your destiny--your greatest moment? I know mine. 

They replay in my head. The day my father grabbed my forehead and kissed me, smiling his bushy, dirty face before I went to sign up for knighthood...the day I married my wife, with my brothers in arms there to be my courts...when my daughter was born, her beautiful blue eyes staring at me, and, my love. My love for my daughter, my wife, my Marquess, my kinsmen, and my country. I give my greatest moment their love as sacrifice for bringing me here, and for lending me the hand of Saint Elimine. My moment has arrived, the greatest of my life. The blood flowing is never so pure, my life never so vivid, and my sword never so swift as the moment I was destined to live.

But, I don't know who you are. I don't know why, here, my mind wanders to infinite fields, past Pherae, past the court of the Laus, where my mind has detached from my body. I see myself, the blood-stained field and the glint off of the armor of my fallen comrades. My sword swings with a hum in the breezing wind, singing with the bleached fields of wheat weaving in the wind. Her own body moves gracefully, each thrust of the mighty spear contacting flesh, tearing through life and soul. Who are you...the one that pulls me from my existence to examine me, question me, let me conquer my fate as to make my greatest moment one of judgment?

My moment, though, came from more than one day's trials. I've not the knack of a lyre and not the harp of a muse, only my humble words to show you the road to this moment, the one we both deem worthy. No, it was more than that. I think there's some things I need to explain before that.

I lived in Laus, a proud father of a beautiful daughter, product of my equally dazzling wife. I live modestly, and am not any general. I'm merely a soldier, a Knight of the canton of Laus, but nothing more. My life is as expendable as the next, and I freely give it to protect my family and country. My sword is sharpened for the murderous throats of my enemies and sheathed for those whom I love. If my life gives them breath to their last, I give it freely. And, I just might in my greatest moment. The one I was ripped from, like the bonds of friendship that Pherae once held with us, before they destroyed our open arms with treacherous lies and invading troops.

They would burn our land and scorch our forests, bringing ruin to us. The kingdoms of our once-friendly neighbors turned a blood-shot eye to us, and our only reciprocation would be that of a war, a war that I give my life for. It almost seems detrimental, stupid even. To give my life, the very Lauan blood that has lived in my veins, my father's veins, seems worthless, gracing such a dog-faced country, if one dares to call such a plot of rotting land a country, with the acquisition of my mortality. I give you, what omnipotent body has snared me from my moment, a vicarious journey to how my moment has come.

Three days ago, we were sent out of Laus. I'm part of the Third Laus, regiment Four. There are ten regiments in each Laus, and there are five Laus, for each of our portions. The Canton of Laus has its armies, all united under the central governing agency of the Marquess. My regiment was sent out to patrol the outlying land around Caelin, since the Second Laus had taken it back from the filth of Pherae. There was mounting suspicion they'd be attacking soon to take back a city we had just liberated, and so we were out to protect it. The Second Laus had taken residence inside of the city, and there were other regiments of the Third Laus heading to the city or patrolling. Our patrol was on the outskirts of Caelin land, meaning we'd be attacked first, if it came from the direction of Pherae.

The patrolling, though, was just about the same routine as always. My regiment was made up of twenty-five men, which is abnormally small for a regiment. Most regiments were small armies, able and capable of nearly any task, except for siege. Mine, however, seemed more like a neutered dog, only there to stave the appetite of our enemies with our meager number and to whimper to the other regiments of an enemy attack. I think we all knew that, but it didn't mean we weren't fighters. I lived forty-one years, over twelve spent in this regiment. While our number was small, we had ourselves some of the fiercest warriors of Laus that Sir Boier could assemble.

Of our twenty-five, we had five archers, five phalanx troops, fourteen knights, and one commander. We only lacked our shielded dragoons, and those were used on large squads. They would make a shell with their shields, and we'd march like a turtle, but the Fourth Regiment of Third Laus got no such amenities. Despite our predisposed place to be killed, we had persevered. Put in the front of battle, and we'd lasted our ranks longer than regiments of hundreds. Somehow, it was as if Saint Elimine had graced us with her luck, as if no arrow would strike my flesh or sword twist into my sinew. Every so often we lost a man, but he was soon replaced with just as strong a soldier. For my twelve years as a Knight of the Canton of Laus in the Fourth Regiment of Third Laus, I had had only one commander, and his name was Thiocyan.

Commander Thiocyan never had a first name, to my knowledge. He was a stone of a man. No emotion passed his face, and it had been chiseled out of a block of granite to form his rough jaw line and straight, heavy eyebrows. There were left-over scratches of a pick from his carving though, although they'd hardly be attributed to a sculptor's chisel. His body was a mess of scars, both visible and hidden. He had suffered more than one fatal injury, but ended up laughing at the thought that it could kill him when he was back leading the Fourth Regiment within a month's time. He was a shining emblem of what fiery resistance we held firm in our small regiment.

Much like his unwilling nature to die, the rest of the soldiers also had it. He was like our morale, in seeing his torn body, we would think to ourselves "he's gone through more things than we could, and yet he persists in serving his country loyally". From the scar on his neck when a wild beast had slashed his throat with its tendril, to the time he was pierced by an arrow through the dead center of his chest, or the time his head been bashed under the stone of a rabid mercenary, he had survived. He laughed at death and stood as an edifice to what was possible, a mold that every one of his soldiers followed. We fought 'til our bitter tears filled our lungs and the blood had to be siphoned from our veins to make us stop moving, and we'd not yet been killed, not since we became a regiment two hundred years ago.

Sir Boies had thought it a waste of time to anoint us with the new dragoon troops, or to give us more than twenty-five men. We were always sent on the missions that we'd most surely die in, like patrolling the edges of Caelin where the Pheraeans would attack. And yet, we would stride back triumphant to the halls of Laus, albeit broken and bloody, but we'd be back out on that field in a month doing it again. We were the soldiers who neither side could kill, but we were respected among all soldiers. The Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus was considered an honor, to be a true beast of armed combat and the bravest of soldiers to manage in those ranks. If you weren't, you died quickly.

Everyone in the Fourth has died at one time or another. We've never had anyone resign; they've all been killed in duty serving the Canton of Laus. And, like Commander Thiocyan, we each had our mortal wounds. Once a Fourth got his fatal blow, everyone would chuckle and drink ale to his name, as when he returned, he was a man. On the edge of death and coming back to the fray, a new scar showing where death's embrace massaged your soul, you weighted it with love of country, family, and life, then, and only then, were you a true member of the Fourth Regiment. There were twenty-four true Fourth Regiment members, and our only one who hadn't suffered his mortal wound was a young soldier, only twenty-seven, with the name of Bario.

There were some soldiers who died of their mortal wounds, as the name of the injury would have it, and they never truly became a member of the Fourth. But, if you were assigned to the Fourth, it either means you are the type of man who is unwilling to die and willing to fight to the death, or you're just a brash fool. In either case, you're suited to be a part of my military family, the Fourth. And, only when you've been struck down in combat, only to rise again to your brothers, then you're a true Fourth Regiment brother. Bario had been with us for seven months, through three battles, and not been struck down. He was as violent, fierce, and foolish as the rest of us, running with his blade into the thick of the enemy, but he'd not suffered his wound. Everyone embraced him as if he was a Fourth, though, exhibiting every quality of us, except having been laid for a nurse to quote his death imminent.

That's the legacy of the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus. We die, and yet we come back. We're the infantry that, for all intents and purposes, shouldn't exist, but yet we still persevere. Other soldiers respect us, seeing us as the ultimate soldiers, and yet we're set with tasks that increasingly ensure our death. It's as if Saint Elimine whispers in Sir Boies' ear to give us another challenge before we can be granted our eternal rests. But, my moment, my perfect moment of life, that came on just such a worthless mission.

Our departure from Laus would take us three days to get to Caelin, and, from there, we'd be on patrol for fourteen days and nights before we could return to Caelin for rest, and, from there, we'd be instructed new orders, which would probably just be another patrol. The night we left Laus, I kissed my wife and daughter good bye, telling them not to worry, as I shouldn't die. How could I? I had suffered my wound, a flurry of blades of my enemy, and yet I survived when I should not have. What drove me to get better was seeing my wife have my daughter, back when I was wounded, as I'd not want her to live fatherless, as well as the guilt in never being a true Fourth Regiment. How disgraceful if I'd not heal and become a true soldier of the Fourth? I'd not allow it, and so I healed, against every odd.

Our mission was patrol; I've said it thrice now. Our first night on our expedition out to the barren lands outside of Caelin was marred by a night that quick fell. It was a night that's as dark as the vapid depths of the black soul of the wicked Lord Eliwood of Pherae. His foolish trials bring us here, to the front of battle. What friendly neighbor sieges countries that haven't a weapon that'd dare slice the flesh of your kinsmen, and yet you attack? The Pheraeans would, and they did. Caelin fell to their sword, and we have liberated it, now patrolling for their inevitable counter-attack.

The night we spent out on the plains, as usually we do. Our armor and weapons are worn sheathed and stowed on our trip, so that if we're attacked en-route, we'll still have a fighting chance. Had I been a dog of a Pheraean, I, too, would attack the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus before we could get set to repel them. However, we also made sure the more obese items, like our main armors and obtuse shingles for our legs, were stored. No use in wearing an item which only will contribute to our tiring out. We each had our sack adorned to the back of our mails, tied on by leather straps and hanging on the rusted hinges of our armor. We each had survival items in there: tents, food stuffs, and utensils. Our food would be found on the plains, and we'd survive how we always did, so we didn't need to burden ourselves with un-needed items. The most burdensome item I carried, outside of my necessities, was a scarf of my wife. It smelled of her and my daughter, and was always wrapped around my neck, warm or cold.

On the first night, we camped hungry. Our bellies had been made full by loving wives before our leave of Laus earlier that day, so there'd be only but carrion to leave had we hunted that night. It would have attracted animals, and any man of the hills and plains can tell when the predators have left for meat on the air. It makes them wonder, are there enemies in the region that have been near and camped out? Although we were safe and in Lauan grass, there could be no telling if Pherae was mounting an attack straight on our capital, so better not to leave traces.

Each of us had our own tent we slept in. However, night fell so quick that navigation would be futile. We ended our night with a stiff campfire that whipped in the wind and stabbed the darkness with a dull blade, hardly illuminating our faces under the oppressive night. We all sat around, the wind whistling through our armor and our mails growling as their shackles were tickled by the wind. We started taking off our gear, laying it inside of our tents, both to weight it and to secure it. We'd get no attack this night, and if enemy found us, it would be by luck. No stars could lead them to us, nor us them, so we waited.

As night idly fell by, we were polarized only to the far-off howl of a wolf to his young and the whip of the violent wind. Eventually, we found ourselves looking around at each other. The fire lit us up in ghastly disproportion, giving only the bottom half of most faces a passing of light, making us all look like Shamans. We had no magic to our names, and our enemies hardly had themselves. To me, magic was a fool's tool, only suited for those too weak to wield a sword. Any skilled knight would kill a foolish magician, not dependent on whatever witchcraft he would use. Man needs no artificial items to fight more than his fists and sweat, and magic was an abomination of the fine craft of battle. The silence was becoming awkward, and although we weren't talkers, there was a mounting hazardous look in everyone's eye. Then, finally, it was broken.

"It'll be two days out from here towards our stake in Caelin. We've been ordered to patrol that area for an additional fourteen before returning to Caelin, and we shall get new orders there," Commander Thiocyan finally said, arcing his head to look his men in the eyes as he said it. "It's not much of a job, but it is one. The Fourth wouldn't be sent on a menial mission, so you can expect enemies. Our blades will slick the blood of those Pheraean dogs before the weeks end, so don't let your mind wander to the crevices of home when battle is on our doorstep."

"Do we know what to expect?" an archer asked. The archer was a friend of mine, his name was Nitrat. He was thirty-seven, a few years younger than I, but about average for the Fourth Regiment. No young kids made it into our ranks, as it was too prestigious and too hard. While we fight eighteen-year-olds on the fronts, while Pheraeans are cowards enough to send children to battle, we fight with honed age and skill. Sir Nitrat was an archer of the court of the Canton of Laus, until he made a snide comment on behalf of Boies' foreplay with the armies of Laus. He was then demoted to the Fourth Regiment, a position he held in higher esteem then protecting the royalty of our combined nations. Nitrat had a mouth that couldn't tell his mind when not to say something foolish.

"What ever Pherae throws at us is what we expect. Be it myrmidons, Knights, archers, Clerics, or Shamans, we will be merciless towards them."

"I've heard rumors of a Pegasus Knight amongst their ranks," Nitrat responded to Commander Thiocyan. We all were silent, looking with confused eyes as to how, and why, Nitrat could continue to speak to our commander in such disrespectful terms. He hadn't the slightest bit of reserve, but we all had known this now for years. Also, he had the steadiest bow of our five archers, as well as any other man whom I have seen wield a bow.

"Pherea has hired a Pegasus Knight to help them fight this war, it is true. What cowards as to not use their own blood, I know not what foolery consumes their idle minds, but it'll not deter us. We're the Fourth Regiment and no soldier of Pherea, Pegasus Knight or otherwise, could defeat us. Sleep well tonight, my soldiers; we wake at dawn with no wife next to us as we had this morn." With that, Commander Thiocyan picked up his long sword and helmet from the rut in the dirt it had accompanied, the slight glint of the dull metal shining into our eyes with the reflected fire, and he was into his tent. The rest of the Fourth muttered amongst themselves for another while before returning to their own tents to sleep.

As the fire slowly died, only I sat there, looking at its embers. The thought of a Pegasus Knight was enthralling, and one I couldn't remove from my mind. Four other soldiers still sat around the fire, lying down on the soft grass to look into the dark sky, or equally pondering some far-off mystery. It didn't take long for Nitrat to stand up and come over, sit next to me, holding his satchel of arrows with him. He settled in, leaning close to the fire, drawing arrows from his sack. He stuck the head into the embers, making sure it wasn't hot enough to melt the leather holding it to the wooden shaft. As he rotated arrows in and out, he looked at me, smiling that grin he always has. Had he not been a soldier, he could have been a jester of the court.

"So, just think, a Pegasus Knight..." he whispered. Snatching an arrow from the fire, the metal head glowed with an orange light before dying back to darkness to mix in with the night. He dipped it into a small canteen he had with him, the sizzling of the steel loud and grating, then setting the cool head back in his quiver. "You Knights don't get all uh' what we do. These arrowheads can be sharpened all they want, but without heat, they're just sharp. Making 'em hot, that fuses it all together, makes a nice, pointy death stick. Think of how your sword was forged."

"I hadn't questioned your practice, Nitrat," I responded in turn.

"No, but your Knighthood had. Do not worry, for I may be odd, we're both in the Fourth."

"You speak to me as if I've not served with you for eight years now, Sir Nitrat."

"One questions allegiance every now and then. Be it your allegiance to Marquess, your country, Saint Elimine, your family, or the Fourth. It's just normal for one to be weary at all times. Have you not questioned?"

"I have," I responded. Of course I have questioned, if it is not evident this far into my denouement.

"Of what?" he mused, his eyes tracing a soldier who stood tiredly before entering his own tent and slapping the ground loudly with his weighted body.

"Purpose," I said without a single note of conviction.

"Wait, you hear that?" he asked all of a sudden. I responded I didn't. "Sounds like a fly beatings its wings, but a hundred miles away..."

"What use are the senses of an archer if he can't discern silence from noise?" I asked with a smirk.

"What use is a Knight without his stupidity and brawn?" I chuckled, slapping him on the back for a moment before he continued. "Purpose of what, my friend?"

"That I know not. Purpose of life? Purpose of fighting? Purpose of our leader, the Marquess, for bringing this bitter war to our door steps. I know it is the Pheraeans who have brought it, but I never leave blame on only one side. Or, perhaps, the purpose of me still breathing. Being a member of the Fourth isn't for naught. Death hangs over every one of our shoulders like an old pal who whispers into our ear, welcoming us back in every battle to sit down to feast with an old friend."

"How poetic of you. You've not a purpose? What about your family? Their purpose, so that they survive, through your sword protecting them. How about your daughter surviving you? That sounds like enough purpose for me."

"It would, for you, Nitrat. Maybe I'm not so simple a man to have a well in my soul."

"You be simple enough to swing your sword for Laus and kill its enemies. That's all any of us need be, that's the limit of our complication. It's a life of a nameless soldier on the battlefield of life, only to slay his enemy and kill who ever is deemed an oppressor of the freedom of the Canton of Laus," Nitrat finished. He pulled his last arrow from the fire, dipping it into his canteen, and back into his sheath. "This fire gives our position away," he said after surveying the surroundings with an archer's long eyes. He took a slight sip from his canteen, then threw the rest of it on the fire. Only he, I, and another man, who had passed out from looking at the veiled sky, were around its lighted embrace.

"What if there was a Pegasus Knight, eh?" he said for a moment, leaning back. His arrows shifted in their quill as he leaned back, the hollow sound of the rustling of the shafts like a tolling of a church bell in the silence. Clicks of the fire's dearth echoed the grassy plains, the few burned embers left golden, charring with a hissing vehemence of the water poured on its embroiled brethren. It fought the same battle that I would soon fight, the one that was losing against an unbeatable enemy, but not one that would be so easily toppled, nor would that ember falter like some child to the enemy. It'd fight until the heat was stolen from its grasp, as my life in my moment.

"What does that matter? We kill any enemy of Laus, right?" I replied with a smirk.

"Come on, you have any idea how much one of those flying donkeys would be worth? Just think 'bout it. I'd shoot that little bitch out the sky, and we'd snag her horsey, and how much could we sell it for? We'd be promoted to Thiocyan's level, perhaps even be a member of Sir Boies' regiment, and while he may be as impotent as a eunuch, he commands a fine regiment. And, the money, oh by Saint Elimine, the wealth! I could live the rest of my life in the presence of beautiful Lauan women, with their large breasts and hips spread wide for a man of the Fourth, and never have to worry again about an ale being the only in days! I could live on as much wine and pleasure as my mortal confines would allow. That's how an archer of the Fourth should be goin' on his last days."

"Keep your promiscuous thoughts to your own vile brain, Sir Nitrat," I said with a chuckle. He reciprocated the laugh, one that echoed deep into the fathoms of the night. A soldier rustled open the flaps of his tent, looking a weary and darkened face out at us, whispering a curse for quiet. "I'm going to rest my eyes until dawn; we've a long walk ahead of us. You should as well. Keep those thoughts in your mind, Nitrat; you never know when you may just get the chance to fell a valkyrie of the sky." I smiled, patting him on the back, then stood, grabbing my helmet and sword, and retreated to my tent.

If there was one thing I loathed about being a soldier, it was night. Sleeping on the cold, hard ground was something I could never get used to, not after the warm embrace of my wife and the bed I had given eighteen pieces of Caelin gold for. The ground wouldn't give you anything soft to lie into, no matter how hard you'd elbow it in the course of the night. And, when you awoke, you felt as if you spent the night climbing and fighting the side of a Dragon along a Dragon's scales, not like you'd awoke from sleeping. Dawn came quick, though. I had hardly the time to see my wife and daughter before I was jostled awake by the steel-toed foot of Commander Thiocyan into my mail. It didn't hurt, but it's hardly anything nice to wake to.

"Get yer dogged asses up, soldiers!" Thiocyan yelled. He always yelled that, or something like it, when on the move. Anytime he could say something like that to his troops, he did. It was as if the commander thrived off of being superior to his troops, and holding their lives in his hands. He certainly deserved it. Not a single one of us could kill him, so he was our superior in the sense of both politics and strength. That's the type of leader that is able to be followed, not a puny one who leads by name and heritage and not true ability, unlike Thiocyan, who's proven his worth to the Fourth with the map of injury scrawled over his body. Not a single limb or patch of skin didn't have its story for the scar sitting there, like it were prime farming land for the vagabond farmers of war.

Within fifteen minutes, all of us were up, our tents rolled tight and on our backs, and we were setting out. The archers made sure we left no trace, as usual. They would spread out the embers, scrape the depressed ground where we slept, and remove all signs of our civilization, in case someone tried to follow us. The phalanx troops would help the commander plot out where to go, considering being a phalanx, you also had to nearly be a man born in the clutches of a forest and have that knack for nature. The Knights had the brutish work of rolling tents, preparing for the day's trip, and eventually, we'd scout for food. The food endeavor, although, usually falls on us finding and stalking some animal, or just telling an archer to kill it. We're a regiment, a pugilistic, nomadic, militaristic family.

So, we plodded on, second day. There's not a lot to say about that day or why it mattered to where I came, where you, whoever you are, stopped me. It seems my moment might just be the time when I have to evaluate where I have come, and how, but the question remains why. I'll not be so vain as to assume Saint Elimine has come to show me my err in such a glorious moment, but there's absolutely no reason I am not to believe how or why. Maybe this is always what happens before everyone's greatest moment. They let their actions ferment in their psyche like a fine wine, soaking in the steps they took to allow them to be there, at the one moment that validates their life.

We trekked our way as far as we could under the sun. It was a boring trip, highlighted by whatever flora I could pick up with a wandering eye. Under the weight of a chain mail and a breast plate strapped to my sack, it makes it hard to care about much else. The sweat makes the armor feel like it slides over your skin, like a razor to a beard, and makes it more than uncomfortable. None of us wore our leg armor while walking, or our helmets, due to the languid sun that seemed to be rather comfortable, but the more you walked and let it set in, it became quickly malicious, much like that of a wound. I kicked through the dry dirt of the country between Laus and Caelin, ripping weeds and loose chunks of yellowed grass. The land near Laus was fertile and vital; this land was barren and dead. Tracks of horses were buried into the dried mud, alongside those of carriages and foot prints. How old they were, who knew, as the plains were barren of trees or forest, but only the occasional bush. That also played well into us keeping our armor off and energy up, knowing we couldn't be snuck up on.

We made our way down a shallow ravine, complete with a cake of mud that filtered into the air in powdery delinquency as we trucked through. A river looked like it once ran through, the weeds like a trail of blood where the carcass of the stream once was. It was there I saw the only tree I saw through the entire journey. So what, a tree, I thought. It was odd to see one out on the barren plains, but something hit me later, well, now. It stood out oddly in the barren wilderness, kind of like an iconoclastic beacon. The tree itself looked like a shrub that had been enlarged. The trunk was dry and brittle, with bark one could peel with a fingernail and bony tendrils for branches. Its roots weaved in and out of the ground of the side of the ravine, showing its hair-like appendages. It needed water and was displaced by the river it once fed on, but it still survived. The few leaves on its branches whistled in the wind, ready to crumble, but not yet gone.

No one really noticed it or said anything. We had plenty of trees in Laus, they were quite common. You take for granted something like a tree, but when on the yellow fields, you kind of take a sight like that with a grain of salt for its oddity or symbolic purpose. I can only strive to be poetic in a vain attempt to understand the tree, but maybe I am being far too indulgent in the small fact of a tree. However, I think it and I have something else in common. It grabbed onto something that was hardly able to sustain it, and remained strong to the worthless dirt, hoping maybe a stream would once again save it. But, at the same time, it couldn't move either, it was immobile.

I love the Fourth, I love Laus, and I love my family. But, there are more fertile lands out there, better figures to lead by, and better causes to live by. My life's not dictated by that of a word of the canton of Laus, but it is also not totally devoid. Even if his reasons are as foolish as that of the notions of my daughter asking why I have to be a person who kills other people, I follow them. While I may think that our enemies, the dirty Pheraeans, are worthless scum only befitting to be bile that rises in my throat when thinking of their treachery of peace, their warriors fight with lust. That lust, perhaps for their country or for something, is a thing we lack. We fight for Laus, but never have we such ferocity for its humble stones as the Pheraeans. That level of love for one's country, even if misplaced, is powerful. And yet, here I stand, part of the Fourth, immobile.

We camped out that night, as usual. Before night fell entirely, I scoped out a wilderbeast on the far edges of the horizon. Like most animals, they water at the edge of night, where the sky creaks its door shut on all light. It was a fat mother, not far off from birthing. Me and two other knights spotted it, calling our archers over. All five fired their bows with the inaudible twang of a quick finger to silence the string. They had three volleys into the air before their first hit the ground. One of the first five hit, and as the animal turned to run, it was struck by the second and third waves. As a group, we made our way to the fell beast and camped there. Not only did we not have to carry the wilderbeast that way, but we were near a fresh source of water. It'd be that much easier to dispose of our traces and the carrion.

An hour and a half later, we had the stinking entrails spilled out onto the grass. The sharpened edges of the grass cut into the exposed intestines, adding to the aroma, and letting the blood stick onto their edges. The grass was so used to absorbing as much water as it could that the blood instantly made the ground look painted instead of just stained. The archers were quick to collect their arrows, washing them as necessary. Commander Thiocyan was always the first to do what needed to be done, and kicked the dying animal in the head as we approached. The steel edge of his boot dug into its temple and put the poor beast out of its misery, then proceeded to gut it with a spare dagger, leaving his sword sheathed.

The meat was cooked on an open fire that we made by throwing on whatever brush wood we could find. While nothing grew, things did in the few fertile weeks of summer, leaving plenty of plant decay behind. A crackling fire was thrust into the night sky, lighting the parched earth orange with its bristling luminosity, casting a shadow a hundred times longer than the single blade of grass that produced the shadow, almost like a circular arc of phalanx spears around our campsite. It flicked and seared the meat, roasting it around the edges and combating the rotten aroma with one of sweet gamy meat. Once the large chunk of meat we had skewered on a spare sword was cooked thoroughly, we each cut off pieces with our daggers onto our plates. We each carried a plate, a cup, and a fork with us in our rupsacks, metal ones that were solid and easy to clean.

"Y'know, you ain't so quick to join our ranks, kiddo," Thiocyan said, slicing off the first piece of meat for himself, the bits of juice dripping out of the meat and hissing in the fire. He was talking to Bario, the only member of the Fourth who hadn't suffered his mortal wound.

"I'd love to say I wish I could, sir, but I do not wish to have my family know I've been killed, sir."

"If you die, you're not one of us anyways, so whadda I care? All I wan' are my Fourth and a fine woman at my side, and I could take on any army, this land or beyon'."

"I shan't keep ya waiting, sir," Bario responded with a chuckle. Bario was a knight, like me, and not only was he the youngest at twenty-seven, but also the only one who hadn't the official mark of a Fourth. He'd not be for long without it, though. It was, however, our duty to badger him until he did get it. We all had somewhat of a bond with him, seeing our own time before our wound in him, but he was still a remarkable warrior. Being with the Fourth for seven months, and not being stricken down was a testament to his own strength on the battlefield, so no wonder he hadn't got it yet. And, while his sword was swift as any of ours, he had gotten to our skill without suffering our err of an enemy's blade.

"Keep me waitin', eh? Then how do you want it? When ya gonna get it? Ya never know and can't predict it, it's like predictin' when you're gonna die. Well, it is predictin' when ya gonna die, actually," he said with a broad chuckle of a man who had known the feeling all too well. He grabbed the soldier's plates, cutting off pieces of the meat and handing it back.

"Whatever doesn't kill me, sir," he said with an equally broad grin.

"I'll agree to that, Bario," Thiocyan said, throwing him back his bent plate with the sizable piece of stringy meat back. "You know how I got mine, soldier?" Most of us did, or a few of them. His initial was a mystery to me, but I had been there when he had gotten about every other scar of his. We'd all been there in the small room of whatever local hospital we could find in some off-the-beaten-trail small town, as he laid dying in his own fluids and gurgling on his own blood, but somehow, he came through. All he would need was a flask of local brew, the company of the Fourth, and he'd be fine.

"Well, ya see, I was a lowly ol' little beast of the Fourth when I was about your age, at twenty-five. You can't run into the Fourth like you can other regiments, we take only some of the best, you gotta prove yaself. So, my first battle, a skirmish against some of those damn stupid mercenaries out for our horses one night, well, they came into the Fourth barracks, and were about to take them. Someone saw them, and we started a brawl, a good ol' fashioned melee. Like all military outside of the Royal Guard and Sir Boies, we're too far off from Laus to actually get help within anything of an hour, so it was just us twenty-something against them. They were just out to grab our crap and go, like some vagabond pirates, but we got 'em caught up. Anyways, I forgot my sword like a damn stupid rookie, and I tangled with one of them piratin' whores, and he got me good. Right under my ribs. I was in the Lauan nursing house for three weeks, and my commander at the time, rest his soul, Hubert came and dropped an entire pint of ale onto my ribs. I swear on Elimine it ran up to my mouth and could taste it, but that kept me awake and alive for the rest of my time 'cause after he did that, he kneeled down and said to me that I was now part of the Fourth, and if I didn't come back to his regiment, I'd be as worthless as the brew he just threw on me. And, I came back, and he bought me a real ale to go with my wound's drink."

Bario was silent for a moment, thinking it over. "Great story, Commander Thiocyan. I hope that I can at least have one that interesting."

"That ain't the only way to go, boy. Hell, we each got our stories, and none of us are without our scars. Tell the kid, Nitrat," Thiocyan said, sitting down roughly on the ground with his ample slab of cooked wilderbeast. Nitrat scoffed down his last piece of meat, standing up with his plate and unsheathing his own dagger, approaching the bulk still skewered above the flame.

"Well," he started, cutting another piece off, "I'm an archer, youngin'. I don't get none of that shit-stupid in-close combat that you will. We got the sight, the taste, the smell, and the hearing for miles, and we don't need to be fighting like kids, we do it with style. Like that, ya hear it? The light flicker of an insect's wings, something you stupid Knights never understand." A ruckus of clamor was heard from the section of everyone else in the Fourth, save the archers, including me, as we told him to shut his fearful mouth, because only real battle took place when you can see your enemy, with a grin. He quieted us all with his jesting gestures, then continued. "And this is why we prefer to do it with style and far away. I was shooting off all the arrows I had, my second battle, at this damn convoy. It must have been their commander, as he was lined head-to-toe in this exotic looking armor, probably from one of the other countries, where them damn flying donkeys roam and the women have more balls than the men, and he was heading at me on his horse. He had this phalanx on him he was using like a joust, and I shot about nine or ten arrows at him in the span of about ten seconds, all of the bouncin' off of him like pebbles. So, he came up and ripped that tip through my armor, piercing it like a damn piece of wood, and threw me up against a tree. I was pinned to that damn tree all night with a spear through my abdomen." Nitrat lifted up his shirt with the clinking of his mail, showing the worked over skin that seemed dented in, just slightly off center of his navel. "Spent five weeks in the home before getting back out, and this woman-among-men here," pointing at Commander Thiocyan who waved his fist in smirking resent, "was smart enough to say I took a spear as good as any other rat," which let a rousing laugh from the most of us. "As long as we're going, you go now," he said, pointing at me.

"Oh, uh..." I stuttered. I never stuttered. I always knew what mine was, and so did everyone else, but I never actually got a chance to talk about it, or word it. It's like when you know something you saw happened, and everyone you were with knows it, so you never have to explain it to them, but when you do have to explain it, you can never get it as right as what you experienced, and what everyone saw. "Well, I got stabbed. That was about it."

"Well, that was terrible. Do better," Nitrat urged me on. "You think a kid like this knows anything about glory? You're gonna leave him under whelmed and disappointed when he's lying in his own piss and blood if you make it out like that."

"Fine, it was eleven years ago, twenty-nine. I had been cut off from the rest of the Fourth, from our flanking group. I was taking on as many soldiers as I could. They would see me alone, then rush at me and try and take me down. I kind of stand out, I'm a large man. No one wants a big guy on the battlefield. So, I had three different guys against me, back when we would fight amongst our own of Laus. One guy slashed at me, I jumped back and stabbed him in the throat. As I pulled out my slicked blade, the other got me under my arm. The armor slowed it, making it only a small slice, but it cracked a rib. I swung around and cracked his skull with the blunt force of my blade. It mashed his helmet in, but didn't break, but he fell as dead as any other body. The third one jumped at me and got another good stab in on my chest, same side as the other. As he tried to draw it out and attack again, I cut his wrist, leaving the blade in and his hand on the ground. But, not before he used the other hand to grab out the blade and slice me across my abdomen. Finally took off his head in my next slice, but then fell next to his twitching carcass as I tried to hold my intestines in."

"I remember that 'cause I had to kick in your guts when I picked yer ass off the bloody ground," Thiocyan said with a grin. "I don't know how ya lived that, brother. You got it one of the worst of us Fourth, a real honorary of our ranks. Y'know, I don't even know any man who would survive that kind of gamble without somethin' there. What was it?" the Commander asked as he ripped a piece of meat from a carved off bone.

"My daughter. She was due soon, and I didn't want her to be fatherless, nor my wife without a husbandless. Seeing her face is what drove me to live, and it's why I know I won't die. I'll never leave without knowing I'll be back to see her."

"And that, Bario, ya puny whore, is why he is a Knight of the Canton of Laus in the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus. Keep it in mind, as you can't do any worse than he," Commander said, standing. He threw the bone into the embers, watching them curl up and grasp the bone, searing what little meat was left on them before walking to me. He grabbed my face with his wide palm, like my wife would, my cheek in his broad grasp, patting me in a filial love, then proceeded to his own tent. Before he ducked in for the night, he said his piece. "I want that fire out within the hour, I want all of you knocked out and ready to patrol in front of Caelin tomorrow, and whatever meat's left, I want it dried out for the morning, but leave no scents. You know what that means, Phalanxians, sack it and tag it. We're gonna need it. Let your dreams be full of the flowing ale of Laus and innumerable virgins, men!" A hoorah emanated late into the night from us, I included. I wished not to be unfaithful to my wife, but it was a code of honor to keep to. Never would I deny her the full capacity of my love.

The rest of my brothers fell into a somniculous bosom quickly, retiring quickly after Commander Thiocyan. I, however, lingered. Not a night went by I didn't think of my wife and daughter. They both shared the same curly, golden hair and deep green eyes, one I could see an emerald reflection of my rough face in. Their supple cheeks were so different than my scarred and blood-soaked ones, and my scraggly hair had nothing for their delicate silk. In the jumping fire of the dying embers, I could see their faces made out in the slithering flame. My eyes were broken and my smile fractured as a sound slung me back to reality.

"Uh...sir, can I ask you something?" I looked over. It was Bario. His face was lit in a disproportionate flicker of the campfire, highlighting his smooth face and inexperienced eyes. They were eyes that hadn't been brought near death and seen beyond the sky in his face, but into something beyond our realm. He hadn't shook hands with Death, and his eyes had their innocent luster. Eyes start pure, then lose two hues; the first is when you kill a man, the second is when a man kills you. After those two are gone, all you have is another organ on your face, not a window to the soul or any gauge, but something as useful as a liver or a lung, and nothing more. I asked him "what" in a flat and angry tone, mostly for breaking my moment of bliss. "Aren't...weren't you scared?"

"Of what?" I didn't get it. What did he want? He was just a rookie. He had been in the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus before us, and that's commonly known as the highest death toll regiment of them all. The inexperienced children go there, but it seems he survived enough for someone to wonder why he was there, and sent him to the Fourth. He's proven himself a competent warrior, but no wound, yet.

"That when you got the, erm, fatal damage, were you scared of dying? What if you didn't come back, and were never a Fourth? What then?"

"You're such a rookie. You may be twenty-seven, but you could be an eighteen year old Pheraean dog and not be any different. Was I scared? Of course I was. My family is all that matters to me. I love the Fourth, every one of my brothers in arms, but never would they out-weigh my love for my wife and daughter. Not seeing them again was more than anything else I needed to make me survive. Being a Fourth matters, but it's not what I needed. I needed to be a father."

"Yeah, I guess that makes sense," Bario said, leaning back. Suddenly, another voice entered.

"Shut yer trap, ya worthless knights, get yer ass to sleep," Nitrat said, peeking his head out of his tent. I picked up a near stone and chucked it at him, hitting the tent and not him. "Leave the long-range to me, fool. If you want me, you gotta get close like an ape to club me!" he said with a snicker before retreating back into his tent.

"He's right, Bario. I'm going to sleep. If you need to find some sort of reason to live once it happens, well, I cannot help you. But, you have to know why you fight and for who. It doesn't matter the country, the canton, or the regiment, because ultimately, it's your blood that leaks from the wound, no one else's. That's when you have to find it in yourself to survive, and it's not the Fourth's duty or anyone else's, it's yours. If you need a reason to live, make it to finally become a Fourth. Make it for your new wife, or make it for Saint Elimine. I can't tell you, but if you're so stupid as not to get what to live for, then you're not going to live."

"I'll find something, and I'll tell you," he said with a shy, genuine smile. I patted him on the back firmly, almost like a son before going to my own tent. I quickly adjusted my sword, holding the end of it up like a post. My sword was on one side and my sheath the other, making a triangle-shaped tent, each of them serving as a support and dug into the crumbling dirt. I usually don't remember my dreams. They're full of the faces of the ones I have killed, and they look at me with their weapons in hand. Before I killed everyone, whatever they were about to do was ingrained in my eyes, like that of a scar. I see their faces and movement, except this time, I don't parry and stab, I don't dodge and slash, I take it, and I die. I die a thousand deaths from a thousand men's attacks. And, once I have died them all, they come and pick me up and they welcome me. It's eerily like the Fourth Regiment, and perhaps some sort of motivation. I don't know what Saint Elimine is trying to tell me. Perhaps only at death am I truly welcomed and right? That would be my grand moment, the moment for living, if any. But, like all errors of faith, it's only so much as you make it.

Morning was quickly upon us. The sun sat on our shoulders like a small demon, catching the side of our eye and whispering into our ear that we were on the edge of starting our patrol. The patrol was going to be grueling. Not because it was tough, but because all we would be doing was walking in a long patrol line, a hundred paces between each of us, and strolling around the plains, day to night, night to day, on the look out. And, if we all got killed in the middle of a battle that we got, well, we'd be letting down the other regiments in Caelin. We were the first line of defense, and expected not to buckle at any weight.

The Phalanxians were quick to divvy up the dried meat between the twenty-five of us, each of us putting it on our travel pouches. They carried salted pouches that dried meat in the course of a single night, and we all benefited from it. If we rationed it right, we'd not have to hunt that day. Before we left, we filled our canteens from the watering hole and threw the corpse of the wilderbeast in. The archers cleaned the campsite, we knights packed up, and Commander Thiocyan was left alone to plot. He told us the day as we did our routine.

"First thing is we go to Caelin. We get out orders, and we head out. Nothing bad, hard, or wrong, just do it. And, we're not picking up any of the local brew or broads, men. We're here on orders from Sir Boies for the Canton of Laus, got it? When I go in to talk to whatever officer there is pulling the strings, you all stay together, behaved, and like what these rookie kids, no offense Bario, think the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus is all about." As his word held true, we made it to Caelin within the day. It was about noon when we did, but the city looked built to resist any troops. Unless someone attacked with anything less than a trebuchaire, they were going to have a hard time.

Caelin itself was built like a fortress, and it truly was. Tough stones showed their mettle with the off-colored scheme of the high-walls, showing where weakened bricks had been taken out and replaced. It also had plenty of aesthetic damage. A few arrowheads still stuck out of the mortar, there were large indents on the walls where it looked like a boulder was hurled, and the archer posts at top had only three, of over a hundred stone blocks, broken off from attack. Swords scars, oil slicks, and other signs of war lined the bottom of the walls, as numerous as Commander Thiocyan's own battle wounds. Of all the things I noticed were the rusted shields posted up upon the walls of Caelin. On the large, gray stone walls, there were a large amount of knight shields, ranging from ones of Pherae, the Old Guard of Caelin, and even Lauan, showing their varied history and how many different people were killed in trying to siege their walls. It also represented more than the number but the time they survived, showing some old insignias and aged shields, lined in rust.

The gates of Caelin opened slowly, being roped open by the gate guards of the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus. As we entered, both sides of the entrance were lined in Caelin folk and Lauan soldiers. The thought of having the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus was a sight to them. Every single man had been through enough war to be so tough as to look death in the face and sneer. Each of us was so tough that we could break the walls of Caelin with a malicious stare. Each of us were so brutal we could kill an innocent baby without thinking about it, and then spit on the weeping parents. Or, that was what they had heard about the Fourth.

Commander Thiocyan reveled in the sight of people whispering as we entered, every eye fixed on him and his men. There weren't a lot of us, but every one of us had presence, a sort of aura that people feared and respected. He strutted with a smile, ear to ear, winking at every beautiful girl he could. They blushed, turning away, and then looking back with coy eyes. He turned, looking at all of us as he walked.

"Become a real Fourth, and you too could enjoy this, Bario," he said, making us all chuckle. The crowd erupted at hearing his voice, wondering what sort of leather was put into his throat, or what snake had grew in his voice box. Unbeknownst to them, though, his voice was rough and distinguishable as one of the most awkward and unsettling sounds known because his throat had been cut by a wild beast that attacked him not but four years prior. Even before that, though, he had an imposing and intimidating voice. I never comment on it because it's normal to me, but when we're in public like this, people tend to notice it, and I realize again why they whisper. Bario blushed heavily, grabbing his gear tighter and walking as normally as he could, hoping not to be identified as Bario. The crowd was equally confused, not understanding the act of public humiliation Thiocyan had just done, but to us, it was completely normal and deserved. It was the way of the Fourth, and until he became one of us, he was going to be subject to whatever we could dish out to him.

We didn't get too far in before a soldier stopped us. He yelled around, getting his own troops sprinkled in the dazed onlookers to resume being a soldier of the Canton of Laus and to disperse the crowd. The crowd was coerced into leaving, and then the captain looked at Commander Thiocyan, preparing some words.

"Are you the Fourth Reg--"

"Yeah, what are our orders?"

"Uh, with me," he said, his pride taking a hit. It must be hard being a commander of a worthless regiment, I mean, all you do is either get killed or watch your men fumble with their swords in some stupid display of how not to be a soldier. It was no wonder he was so quick to just surrender under Thiocyan's intimidating stature. He too was affected by the glamour of the Fourth. Commander Thiocyan turned to us, smirking the same, big smile he has when he looks over a battlefield lined with bodies, and grabs the nearest Fourth, and holds him firm in his wide crook of his shoulder and says to him "look at that, we survived this and these worthless carcasses, they were unworthy to survive". He nodded his head, and we started walking further into Caelin. The cobblestone walkway from the gate went into a central town square, branching off like a tributary of stone walkways. The biggest one headed straight through the serf homestead below the towering shadow of the Caelin royalty's house, the towers of their castle. Compared to the chamber of the Canton of Laus, it was small, but it still towered over the one-story mud-huts of the average people. But, I lived in the exact same accommodation, with the same wife and child as those we passed, so my pessimism seems a little bit misplaced.

The center of the Caelin castle was a monastery. The monastery was what you had to go through to get to the rest of the castle, like an overly expensive atrium with a religious theme. Sculptures of Saint Elimine hung in pious memorial, lingered with the solemn candles being tended to by the mute pastors. We entered, the door being shut by equally silent monks, closing off the small amount of light let into the dark chapel. The faces of small children chased us to the moment the door shut, their tiny footsteps audible outside as they clamored about who saw what and how unbelievable this was that the Fourth was here.

The commander of the Ninth walked forward with Thiocyan. He looked back, waving his hand to stay put. They went forward in the chapel, the distant hymn of a prayer floating through the house of Saint Elimine greeting our ears. A few other soldiers, clad in Lauan armor would walk by, giving us partial glances before leaving again. The pastors kept their chants low and concentration high as they tended to worship, us standing out more than needed. We were the merciless killers of the Lauan army, we had no place in the house of Saint Elimine. About half an hour of just standing passed, some of us leaning against walls, others sitting in a free row, and we started to get bored. Eventually, Sir Nitrat came up and sat down next to me on the long, wooden spectator benches to whenever the pastor would start his rhetoric to the total population of Caelin.

"Do ya wonder what the Commander's doing?"

"Talking, like usual," I responded pretty flatly.

"Thank you for that wise insight. You should be an advisor to Sir Boies with that intellect. Nah, but seriously, whaddya think about this all?" I flashed him a questioned gaze, so he sighed, then explained. "You really think it's right to be out patrolling? All this he-said she-said over Caelin's made me not give a damn about who took this place and who attacked it first, but fact is Laus has it, and Pherae don't. Pherae's gonna come get it, so what do we do? They send the Fourth out to patrol it. Think we're going to get any action?"

"We've got a fourteen day stay out there, I'm guessing we are. Thiocyan is getting the rundown of who, how, what, when of the patrol, and probably an extension of the date, too. We're just gonna do our job, and if we find something out there, yes, we will kill it."

"Heh, always the pragmatist of us. I heard rumors of a Pegasus Knight, y'know..."

"Give it up with the whole Pegasus Knight thing, Nitrat," I warned him. "You keep thinking about that stupid thing and it'll never show up. You just want to see one so you can go 'I shot it out of the sky!' and sell the horse."

"You're damn right I want to! Can you tell me that the pure amount of gold one of those things would bring in, to the right people, would make you stop working for the Fourth and go on a vacation for the rest of your life?"

"It'd be nice to raise my child without having to leave, but I couldn't ever raise her knowing I wasn't protecting her. Money can't protect anyone, it's the people like us who make sure that there's safety for our home."

"If I had the money from a Pegasus, Laus could rot while I went and made my own small kingdom out in the middle of nowhere, and I'd take fifteen supple beauties with me to keep me company. I'd hire ten brewmasters, I'd move in some serfs, hire some architects, and make a kingdom! In three generations, they'd say that Sir Nitrat III wars with Laus, Pherea, Caelin, the fools abroad the ocean, and the world, and they would win with their superior might!"

"Speak softly of your lofty dreams, for they're as worthless as your words."

"So the pragmatist is a poet too. Even without the money, think of the glory. The Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus struck down a Pegasus Knight, Sir Nitrat under Commander Thiocyan landed the killer arrow. Muses would sing of my glory in all of the courts of the lands, my name would be synonymous with every single archer in training, and they'd go 'if only I could be like the great Sir Nitrat'."

"Lofty dreams, Nitrat. You have to fell the beast before you can claim its hide."

"But, you know those Pegasus Knights, they're girls, right? And, what I hear, they're young. Just think if I took her alive with that horse. I'd make her my woman, and she'd be so perfect. She'd be as lethal as I am, she'd be as quick as I am, as cunning as I am, and she'd be beautiful. Her body would be supple, but firm. Her breasts like ripe melons. Her legs like stalks of grain, and her hips, oh her hips, they'd be small and maneuverable, but wide and accepting. And, that voice, a broad voice, oh how it would moan for me."

"What ever makes your dream, go for it. But, I'm pretty sure they'll stay dreams," I said with a light laugh, noticing the unsettled pastors giving us looks of disdain. Nitrat had always been the guy who thought lofty, and never quite grounded. He was a comedian, always in it for glory, fame, and whenever he could crack a wise one in getting the guys to laugh. He was about the only one who could talk back to Thiocyan, and with good measure, because he was just in jest. If you didn't know him first, they might think him offensive, but once you got the jist of his antics, then he became another brother, albeit the one who never matured.

A nun walked by, catching my eye. She was carrying ashes in a decorated, brass bowl, spreading their scent into the air as she said her prayers. I couldn't make out her words, but something struck me about her. I never really go to pray, and I don't really take much heed in Saint Elimine, but there's some serene truth you must observe when in a place like this.

"The worst part is that the Pheraeans believe in the same junk. Makes you wonder if the divine even care for the trials of us mortals," Nitrat said, leaning back. I looked at him oddly for a moment, him arcing his back over the edge of the seat, stretching out. He wasn't a type to philosophize or say anything worth half a gold piece, but he just had said exactly what I was thinking. My thoughts drifted to how justified we were, when our enemies found the same justification in their religion, ironically the same one we believed in. No god could hate one and then approve of the other if they both believed in her, and yet, somehow, it happened with us and Pherae. Or, was Saint Elimine merely a spectator? Does her strength flow to those who are worthy of it, and given scarcely out to the warriors who deserved it? And, more importantly, was I deserving of it out on the battlefield against a dog of a Pheraean?

We waited more, the sight of the church filling my lungs. Sights usually don't fill a lung, that'd be a smell, but if you saw this placed, you could breathe in the piety. It was so thick, from the idyllic hum in the background of a far off choir or the dull footsteps of the pastors surrounding the candles at the bottom of Saint Elimine's statue, there was something you could literally feel. Maybe it was belief, or optimism, something in the place, but it had its own aroma, its aura. But, not to say it didn't have its own smell. It had a dust on top of the booths and sides of its religious edifices, leaving floating debris in the air that shined in the examining light of the stained glass windows. The wood had a polished lacquer smell of cherry, and the worn aisles had the smell of a ripe, old man's cottage. Somewhat sweet, but pungent in an amicable way, coupled with the dust, shown from its stealth, floating journey in the colored light, and the distinct scent of the candles far off, made the place seem like a tangible feeling was in every breath.

Commander Thiocyan wrapped around the back of one of the doors on the far side of the chapel. His voice, the chopped-up inhuman snarl, was distinguishable, especially to a member of the Fourth. He was babbling on indiscriminately with the commander of the Ninth as he returned. The monks gave him an odd look, breaking the silence with his gruff voice and loud, abrasive armor. Thiocyan's response was a confrontational "whactha lookin' at?", which shut them up quickly. Both of the commanders made it to us, where we sat in the back of the chapel. He approached, looking over all of us for a moment, then Thiocyan spoke.

"So, we're out on patrol for fourteen days. Intel says that we're going to run into some recon troops, so if we do, we've got this guy here," he said, exposing another man. Or so I thought it was a man at first glance. However, he was hidden behind the commander of the Ninth, standing like a shy child behind the figure of his mother. Once he was pulled out, he looked naked and exposed from the shadow of his commander. He had armor on, the soft blue glint of Lauan armor obvious, and the stature of a boy. He had to be old enough to be a soldier, or else he wouldn't be here, but was just on the cusp. "This kid's the fastest wimp ya ever seen. If we're engaged, he'll skimper back here and let the other regiments know." The commander leaned down, looking at the shaken boy in the eyes, examining his pure face, contrasted to Thiocyan's worn and scarred one. "Don't be too scared, we're the Fourth, remember?" Then, he turned, looking to the commander of the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus.

"You'll be getting your runt back in a day when he tells you that the Fourth just mopped up the entire Pheraean army," he muttered, the collective hoo-rah from us echoing into the cathedral's infinite halls. "Let's move, Fourth," he grunted. A monk tried to open the door for us, but he quickly shoved the man out of the way and threw the door open with his might, not in the slow and methodical way the monk tried. He laughed a deep bellow, from deep within his gut, then walked out back into the peasant village surrounding the base of the Caelin monastery. As I said before, the monastery connected to the castle, and it was all one big structure.

We were quick to make our way out of Caelin, leaving to the same crowd of people. They parted as we walked forward, Thiocyan leaning back and smugly smiling, grunting at the men and whistling at the ladies. He loved his glory and he loved the Fourth. Then, a little girl pushed her way through the crowds. She kept yelling "Fourth! Fourth!", probably one of the few words she knew. When she emerged from behind the taller people, she had a large basket in her hand. Inside of it were about a dozen loaves of bread, her smiling face accented by about ten grown in teeth and a white dress. I grabbed one of the loaves, breaking it off and handing the other half to Nitrat. In the distance, the girl's father, a baker, waved with a smile, and we gave him an equal nod back. The gates were pulled open by the taut ropes of the Ninth's spare soldiers, and we were quickly outside. The stones creaked and made a grating noise as it shut behind the twenty-six of us. The commander took a deep breath of the air, howling deeply into what he knew was coming. Then, he turned to us, addressing us all.

"Okay, we're getting ten miles out of this city, then patrolling. We have a back-and-forth bullshit route. We camp and find our own food, and we're out here for fourteen nights, including this one. And, if they say this one doesn't count, they can try to tell it to all of my Fourth Regiment. Move out," he screamed, turning and plodding forward. We weren't wearing most of our armor, again. Most of it was snapped onto our rucksacks with a spare piece of leather that jingled with every step we took. The sun beat down on the yellow grass and glinted off of the mails we never took off. We just kept walking out, but it became increasingly hard not to notice our new addition. He tried to keep his cool and just keep walking while in the back, but he was obviously jittery. His pace was uneven, sometimes lagging, then running to catch up and bumping into the man in front of him, who would sneer back. His armor was too big for him and it made an obvious grating noise as it jumbled around his small frame.

By nightfall, he was worn. Never did the kid try and tell us to stop or let him rest, too afraid of displeasing the Fourth Regiment, but once we camped and made the fire, he was looking into oblivion. I knew the look well. When you're so tired and so worn out from something, you're past tired. You got to the point of exhaustion where you don't even need to sleep, you just need blood back in your brain. We didn't hunt that night; we just ate what meat we had. It was plenty for a meal, and we thoroughly enjoyed it. When you lose the accommodations of home, you appreciate the smaller things, like a well-cooked slab of meat over a dried-out chunk of jerky. I felt bad and gave a little to the boy who had tagged with us, as did everyone else, so that he had a decent amount of food. We may have been the rough Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus, but we weren't merciless. He took them with a breathless thanks and scoffed it down without a moment's hesitation.

As night pressed on, our usual schedule went on. Thiocyan made his last words for the night before retreating to our hoo-rah to whatever witticism he decided to tempt the night with, and we tempted it back. If any of our enemies were around, our camp fire and our braying would bring them, but we had no inhibitions about it. We would seduce our enemies in any way we could, because we lacked that enviable facet called fear, but in the mornings, we weren't stupid enough to leave a mark straight to us. I decided to head in early, seeing as how I was usually one of the last out. Once I was lying on the inside of my burlap tent, the rough edges frayed and held up by my sheath and sword to make a small sleeping area over the hard ground, I heard the talking. People always stayed up and talked, but this time, I wasn't amongst them.

"So, you're the puny boy who runs back to Caelin if we get attacked, huh?" a soldier asked. The boy must have nodded, because they continued talking in the affirmative. "Ya such a runt, whattarya, only sixteen? It doesn't matter, if you can run quick and get there, then we'll be fine. But, seeing as how you got your ass kicked today, I dunno. You might be quick, but you're nothin' for distance, kid. You might just be fodder for one of those arrows if you run stupid." There was no response from the boy, but only a laughing ruckus from the man who said it and his buddies. Lithior, I thought, it had to be him. He loved giving Bario a hard time too. He was an old one of us, jaded and scarred, seeing youth as stupidity, not innocence.

"I'll run as fast as I can, sir," the timid boy responded, almost drowned out by the crackle of the fire and cackle of the men.

"I'm sure ya will, runt," Lithior responded, followed by a brief silence before he continued. "Ya didn't bring a tent, did ya? Oh, man, look at this, Bario, the kid forgot his gear! What a damn rookie! Tell me you weren't this bad, come on..."

"I was in the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus, but I wasn't that bad," Bario said, a smirk evident in his words. "I never knew this runt anyways. I was one of the few who didn't get cut down when trying to get a sword out of its sheath like the rest of the worthless Ninth. Don't worry, kid, if you can at least run quick, maybe you'll live along to get out of that unit."

"You may sound and look like a Fourth, but ya ain't full yet, Bario, so to me, you and the runt are on the same page," Lithior responded while Nitrat laughed loudly behind his words. "Serves ya right to be sleeping on the ground, runt. I'm going to sleep in my nice tent while you enjoy the weeds," Lithior said, turning into his tent, Nitrat resounding a seconded opinion. "And, put out the damn fire." In a few minutes, almost everyone was into their respective tents around the fire. They left Bario to clean it, he being the youngest and awake. I was kept awake by some unknown variable or factor, but I couldn't bring myself to join the conversation or to stop listening. A few minutes of silence passed, and I assumed it was over, but apparently, there was more yet to be spoken.

The dull hiss of the fire being kicked to embers with the sole of Bario's boot jostled me from my harbored sleep. In the small interim of muted noise, I almost fell asleep, but I was awoke by the crunching of burned twigs and the last dying screeches of the pyre. Bario sat down exhaustedly, the jingle of his armor loud and abrasive, like all armor of a Knight.

"You, uh...were part of the Ninth?" the boy whispered. I can only imagine Bario gave him the most odd of looks before he chuckled and answered.

"Yeah, I was. I was in it for about six years, more than anyone lives in that worthless regiment. Then, for two years, I served in the Sixth Regiment of the Fifth Laus, then seven months ago, here in the Fourth. I was the only person in the Ninth who had survived more than a year and hadn't moved on. They eventually got drift of my longevity and age, since they always put kids like you in the Ninth. If you happen to live, you get in a good regiment, and if not, too damn bad. If you live this little outing with the Fourth, you'll get moved out of the Ninth."

"I certainly hope so, sir...I find the leadership rather lacking and that the only purpose I serve is that so that grave digger has a job back in town."

"Yep, that's the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus for ya," Bario said with a chuckle.

"Sir...?" the boy asked, hoping not to be offensive or interrupting. "What, exactly, do you do, erm, as a Fourth? I mean, I hear so much about you all, but I know so little. Now that I'm here, and talking to you, a real member of the Fourth, I, uh...I don't know what to say."

"Ha, I'm not a real Fourth. Y'see, to be a Fourth, you gotta die. Sounds stupid, eh? Let me explain. Once you're assigned to the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus, you're a member by the Canton of Laus, but not by Commander Thiocyan. You have to be struck down in battle and assured death in a mortal wound, then you must recover to become a true Fourth. I am the only one of the entire Fourth who hasn't had their fatal injury, so I'm not a real Fourth."

"To us, to everyone else, you're no different. You're a Fourth to me. But...why do you have to get that injury?"

"It's a pride thing, I don't know. One of the knights, over in that tent," I knew he pointed at mine, "he told me that if I don't know what to live for, then I won't live. Once I got something to live for, no blow can truly kill me. I'll live until it is my time to die, if I have a reason to live. I don't know if I got one yet."

"Whaddya mean? You're part of the Fourth!" the boy said excitedly, quieting himself after the outburst and apologizing.

"It's not that easy. If I was ever told I was going to die, or dead on the battlefield, I don't know what would bring me back, and make me live again. Saint Elimine be damned if my belief would resurrect me, but I need something, some emotion or idea, that I will live for. I don't know it yet, but I'll find one. Once I do, it doesn't matter if I have to take on the Mages of Pherae or a thousand Pegasus Knights, I won't die. Then, I'll be a Fourth."

"Why is it so hard to find out a reason to live?"

"If I killed you now, what would be strong enough to make you live, kid?" The boy was silent. He opened his mouth, a few syllables exiting before shutting up again. Bario wasn't that young, he was twenty-seven, but young in comparison to us. This little kid really made a point of contrast to us, and even our "rookie", which was frightfully more mature and world-weary. Had he not suffered his wound in a year's time, I think I'd just consider him a Fourth in any case. He certainly showed it. "Whatever, I'm going to sleep. Long days coming up, and we're gonna need it. I left the embers alive for you to sleep by the fire, kid, so get used to it. That'll be your mom's breast for fourteen days, so love those embers." With that, Bario retreated to his own tent, the rustling burlap sounding on the light wind.

I tried going to sleep, but I only could find admiration for Bario. He was truly a young man who knew far beyond his years, and was as keen as any men twice his age. That was the sort of man who needed to be leading us, not some worthless Sir Boies. An idealistic, strong, and concrete man like Bario. As a soldier, I should say Commander Thiocyan, but Thiocyan with absolute power would be kind of scary. Every boy, thin and fat, every man, baker to soldier, would grab an axe and a shield and be marching. Compassion, that was something that far too few soldiers had and more of what war needed. Ironic though, isn't it? We need compassion on the battlefield when we crush the skull of our enemy. It's one of those things you only know when you've spilt the blood of a man, I can't explain it other than compassion.

That compassion, I think I have. After about fifteen minutes of the wind rustling my tent, I finally moved. I grabbed the blanket I was using, walked outside, and threw it to the boy. He looked fearfully up at my powering figure, obviously lighted by the ember's ghastly glow, to seem like a nightmarish demon, but he accepted the blanket graciously, wrapping his body in it. I returned to my tent. I don't think I needed it. The wind was quelled to the sides of my tent, not being barren and open like he was, and it helped I had enough girth as it were. His frail body needed the heat more than I did. And, I think some sort of inner heat nursed me to sleep that night, the compassion I felt in helping out that kid. I couldn't do that if Commander Thiocyan was up, or any soldiers, it was one of those small things that you did as a person, not when around others.

I didn't have a lot of sleep, but for some reason, it was clear. I woke up early, and felt totally energetic. I woke up with the same smile I fell asleep with. And, I usually don't dream, but I had one. Not like a total dream, really, but more over, a vision. Blue clouds swept a dark landscape, slowly revealing grass and weeds, then two figures. My wife stood there, smiling, her golden, curly hair falling down past her breasts and her tied up garment laced tight up her back. Her hands had not the dirt of labor and cleaning as usual, and her face was full of vitality, not stripped and exhausted. Her hands reached down and caressed my daughter, standing with her back to my wife's leg. They both had their smiles on their faces, the same freckles on my wife's face placed on my daughter's. I walked forward, extending my hand. It was barren, no armor on it, but as I stepped forward, they moved back. And, not stepping, but just that they seemed to extend to the horizon as I got closer. I sprinted, and they went further. Finally, they were gone on the horizon, and I fell down. From there, the light was gone, and I wept. I don't know what dreams mean, and I am no purveyor of meaning, but then something I couldn't place made me smile. I heard their voices, no words, but just the lull of their sounds, and I smiled. It was then my eyes snapped open, their hum swept with the wind along the plains. They were praying to me, I know it, and it carried on the edges of a desolate gale.

Morning was there quickly. I woke up at dawn, collecting my belongings, especially from the kid so no one would know. He didn't know who I was, or which soldier I was, only "some knight". He was groggy, but still smiled a wide, toothy smile that I forced myself not to reciprocate. I just took the blanket back and stuffed it into my pack, turning around to let my smile break my lips. He couldn't see a Fourth be nice, it wasn't right. We packed up quick that day, and started walking. Phalanx troops planned with Thiocyan, knights packed the campsite, and the archers made it look like we were never even there. When we started walking, I still had my smile on my face. I thought it was going to be a good day. I never knew it would be so glorious.

We walked through the yellow grass without so much as a care. We had to make sure we had our normal patrol line though, which meant a hundred paces between each one of us. We reached our destination mark before noon, and were quickly called together by Thiocyan. He got us all together, and then began his speech.

"We're here, ten miles out. Maybe we're not, but we must be damn close. So, I want phalanx troops on each end of our line, then archer behind them, fill in the knights, and then two more archers on each side of me in the center. Standard line, you know the drill, boys. Stay by my side, kid, so that if you see anything, I can give you a firm kick in the ass to move you quicker. We're going mile patrols from this point, that means you phalanx troops, keep distance markers. It's your job to be the mountain men, so do yer damn job. Mount up, men, we're not traveling light, we're in the fray now."

We stopped for half an hour after Commander Thiocyan's speech, readying ourselves. Now, our mission commenced. The spare pieces of armor strapped onto our sacks were taken off and slipped over the mails, our weapons secured to our bodies, and our helmets fastened to our bodies through the loose leather straps. My armor was obtusely large, but so were all knights. The breast plate seemed more like a castle's drawbridge, but once I slid it on, the mail seemed to secure it, and I reached around to fasten it together. Finishing off by putting on my helmet, arm, and leg shingles, I heard the voice of Nitrat. Like all archers, their armor is slimmer, and more suited for movement than ours, so it made securing his together harder. For some unknown reason, the way the armors were designed let his strap be hard, but ours easy. I tied the straps together under his armpit, with his muttered thanks, and we began our patrol.

The line proceeded exactly how Thiocyan had said. We made sure we had enough space, and we started our pacing. We made it a few miles out, then turned around, and went the other way. My view was obscured, and rightfully so. Only a slit was there for my helmet's view, added to the cumbersome armor made it rather unsettling to actually search the distance. I felt like I was inside of a tea kettle, and the heat of the sun made it feel even more convincing I was on Saint Elimine's stove. I could hear the chuckling of people behind me, obviously chatting over the distance. It wasn't hard, I picked up traces of the conversation as well. No words decayed on the soundless plains, letting only the rustle of our footsteps and our words to fill our vacant ears. Archers looked to the sky and the distance, that being their job, while phalanx troops led and us knights were just there to kill anything we found.

About halfway through our patrol for that day, Commander Thiocyan let us rest. It was no surprise we were all bored, something we'd learn to settle with for the next thirteen days, and we'd probably be just as objected towards this ridiculous duty then as well, taking breaks every now and then. We were told thirty minutes, and then we were to be walking again, before Thiocyan himself fell down onto the hard ground to rest. It wasn't that it was tough work, it was just hot, and not that it was too hot, it was just tedious work. Nitrat found a rock and quickly made to sit on it triumphantly, while the others just stood around or lay on the ground. The archers kept a firm eye on the horizons, as even when we rested, it didn't mean the enemy did. But, we all were relaxed and calm. It didn't matter what attacked us, we were the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus. The one who stood, eyes staring around restlessly, was the boy. His armor rattled as he scoped the area with a jittered look, hidden under a knight's armor far too big for him.

"Hey, come here," I heard. I turned and saw Bario waving me over. As soon as I arrived, I sat down, greeted with a chunk of bread he ripped off. He kept some from the baker in Caelin it seemed, the smiling girl and her father, I remembered. I took it graciously and sat next to him with a heavy wear in my bones. "What do you think of this?" he asked in a whisper, trying not to attract the attention of Commander Thiocyan, who unplugged a flask from his sack and took a large gulp of whatever grog he had in there, his scarred face contorting in bitter glee as he took it straight.

"Patrolling is worthless. They told us to patrol only so that whenever Pherae attacked, we'd stop them up. Patrolling is just a ruse, since they can't tell us 'hey, Fourth, go out and kill something!'."

"Even though that's our jobs?" Bario asked haphazardly.

"Even though it is our job. But, it's a job I love. I fight for the Marquess of Laus, as do you. Or, you've not yet found your reason to live, right? You may fight, but it takes a real fighter to live."

"I know, I know," he mused. "I need a reason to live and all, once I am struck down to come back. But, I'm far beyond those like him," he said, motioning his hand to the uneasy boy, who flipped around every few seconds to try and see if some sort of enemy troop was trying to sneak up on him. I had to agree. "But, y'know I been thinking, maybe I know what I'd live for."

"And what would that be? You were just married, I was there. All of us were, your men of honor to see you two off. Nice gal, she is."

"No, not her. I love her, and love to see her face and her smile, but she couldn't bring me back to life if I died. No, that'd be something different. I think I fear becoming a true Fourth because I don't know what would bring me back. I think I know...it's--" Bario was cut off by a loud yell, both of us turning our heads to the sound of the yell.

"Hey, what's that!" Nitrat yelled. He had his hand pointed to the sky, his other held over his eyes to shadow them from the blinding high sun.

"I don't see anything," I commented.

"You're a knight, you don't see anything but what's in front of the tip of your sword. Look, Commander Thiocyan!" he yelled. The other archers turned their eyes skyward, seeing only the blinding light of the sun sitting cloudless.

"If there was something, ya fool, someone else would see it," Thiocyan growled, leaning up from his lying position, capping his flask.

"I'm tellin' ya, there's something!"

"There's not a cloud in the sky, shuddap, Nitrat," Commander Thiocyan yelled angrily.

"No, sir, he's right," another archer timidly mentioned. "I think I see something."

"The hell could be up there anyways?"

"...A Pegasus Knight," I whispered. While everyone was attentive that moment, my whisper was like thunder. Nitrat smiled, nodding affirmatively at me, then looked at the sky again.

"That means it's on reconnaissance. Those Pegasus Knights scout out the area ahead of the troops, and report back. We can't let it get back to the Pheraeans, or it'll know we're here. Archers, fall that foreign flyin' donkey," Thiocyan said, finishing off his flask with a howl. "Kid, get yer ass back to Caelin, we're getting ourselves a bit of action." The boy looked confused at first, unsure, but started gathering his pieces of armor he had taken off in the small break. Commander Thiocyan walked up quickly, grabbing him by his throat, lifting him to his feet, and true to his word, kicked him from behind towards the direction of Caelin. The boy stumbled at first, falling back into the dirt, then stood, and ran, picking up speed and dropping what useless pieces of armor he didn't need. Thiocyan chuckled, turning back to us as he put on his own helmet. "Another day in the Fourth," he muttered.

The four other archers lined up by Nitrat's side, finding his bearings in the sky. They all followed his fingers, aimed their bows, and released on his command. Five twangs released five sticks into the air, flying with as much grace as a twig could have. They whistled into the barren sky, taking our breaths from our lungs. We all looked upward, standing slowly, waiting to see. It seemed as if they fired directly at the sun, trying to pierce the golden yolk that sat blisteringly hot, but never wanted to fry. The air seemed to be ripped from my lungs, everything about me inching upward to where those arrows were, as if to ask "what can you see, arrowhead?". I kept watching, and soon found four falling back to the ground, clanging and bouncing back on the dirt. But, one was missing. Breathless whispers moved around my comrades, but Nitrat just smiled, hushing them.

A loud bray came next, a piercing and unmistakable nay of a horse. The silence magnified it to a roar, lending absolutely no margin of error. It was a Pegasus Knight up there, somewhere, hiding in the sun. Nitrat looked at me, smiling, knowing his arrow hit flesh.

"And, that's been the patter of wings I've been hearing in my ear all week," he said with an I-told-you-so grin that he made so well.

"Tight formation, men!" Thiocyan yelled, unsheathing his sword. He moved behind the five archers, us all falling in behind him. "Reconnaissance can't get out of our grasp, it's gonna have to attack us, or be shot down! Phalanx, spears up, archers under them, I want second formation, and knights, sit under the phalanx troops!" Second formation meant that the five phalanx troops holds their weapons to the sky, not letting anything get close, each of them a few feet apart with the archers kneeling between them, creating a small barrier to the ground, and us knights would sit in that shield.

I would have never known my moment, the reason for me to live, would come here, at this time. There's never any warning, or telling. There's nothing to prepare you or tell you, only that once it comes, you must be ready for the fight and able to do what ever it is that is asked of you. To me, that would be here, against my enemy, the hired killer of Pherae that sat in the blinding blue above me, flying reconnaissance for the inevitable mass of troops to follow. Something else fell that moment, the fifth arrow, Nitrat's arrow. The shaft was covered in crimson, having hit something then been ripped out and left to drop back to Earth.

"Hold your bows, men, wait until we see the enemy...it can't hide in the sun forever," Thiocyan growled, looking up with a hand to block out some of the brightness. "Archers, ready your arrows and draw your strings, fire if you see a single thing." Then, even I saw it. A Pegasus Knight, swooping in and out of the dollops of falling rays, trying to hide its existence.

"It's your drink and pleasure, Nitrat," I whispered, kneeling down to him.

"It's your glory," he whispered back, then turned to Bario, continuing. "And, it just might be your Fourth, if I don't murder the worthless pest atop that flying donkey first."

"If we can kill this recon fairy before it gets back to the Pheraean dogs, we'll be able to hit them unaware! Kill this fool!" Thiocyan yelled, a muted roar exiting all of our mouths in a singular hurrah. I still didn't know it was my moment. So far as I knew, or cared to know, that thing, whatever it was, sitting in the sky, was my enemy. Whatever evil possessed that thing to bring war to the doorstep of my family, my country, well, I'd strike it down as quick as the malicious grin would cross its face if it could splay my organs.

The figure emerged from the blinding backdrop of the sun, seeming to drip like wax from a candle, finding definite form and shape as it descended further from the singular flame in the blue oblivion. It was diving straight for us, slowly coming into view. I don't know how to describe it other than an angel, such as the effigies on the insides of Saint Elimine's chapels, laced in her figure and singing trumpets to her as she looked skyward with that innocent, pleading face. I couldn't make out the form, but it soon solidified, and then swooped in on us. The phalanx troops had their spears high, grazed by the end of the enemy's weapon as it flew low, then cut back into the sky. Five twangs of bows followed it, the arrows tracing its flight. Without the slightest hesitation, both the rider and its animal, turned, as if pushing off an invisible wall. The lance the enemy carried swatted two arrows from the air at once, cutting the shafts in two, and then ducked under a third. The other two completely missed, but the grace needed to do something like that, as well as the skill, was simply astounding. Usually, arrows took down careless aerial units as easy as any avian for a feast, but this was different.

There was something unnatural about this enemy. The white armor it had on glimmered, not just shining from the sun, but emanated its own glow. It seemed ephemeral, almost unbelievable in that it shined like a gloss of a fish eye, but it was tight and easy to maneuver in, as shown by the twisting acrobatics that were performed, as if suspended by a puppeteer's strings. It was unlike any sight I had ever seen, where a white horse with a warrior clad in white on top moved in such a way as to suggest that nothing kept anything bound to the ground, and I could simply float away, stopping and turning suddenly, or looping around an arrow, or sliding to the side to miss one. The head was covered in an ornamental helmet, obvious of the soldier's foreign roots. It served no pragmatic purpose to have it encrusted, but it was as impressive as the rest of the armor. Small engravings of religious epithets, from the conquering of Mycens, or the loss of Juniper, all were shown on the armor, with the figure of Saint Elimine embossed in the center. Even the weapon, which would soon share my brother's blood and mine, was a piece of art. The long lance, a solid construction of a single grain of wood, painted white and hand-carved out with equal angelic-figures near the blade, had an abnormally large tip to it. Usually, a lance had a blade that was about one-fifth of its size, but this one must have been very nearly one-third, buckling out at its base, then quickly coming to a lethal point. The warrior spun it magnificently, the air whispering as it did, the sun glistening off the rotating head, and then securing it in an attack grip with as much ease as any baby has to let its bowels go.

The horse, the Pegasus, was unlike a creature I had ever seen. It was majestic, as if any horse put next to it not only lacked wings, but it lacked the very elements of beauty. What could be seen as a strong, and pulchritudinous display of natural beauty was shown to be ugly and flawed when compared to the perfect Pegasus. A white fur, accented by an equally white mane, were only small pieces of the elegance of the animal. The saddle and reins were made of the same white hue as the armor, small jewels shimmering the light as they warped it in the splendid acrobatics of dodging and evading our fire with a small mask, complete with azure blinders, giving the animal an opposing, yet impressive, stature. The wings, sprouting out to the front of the saddle, held with a second set of reins that wrapped around the tips of the wings, kept them from truly expanding the wings fully, but it also kept the animal in a bound that left my imagination not too far beyond knowing I was in a tangible reality. The carapace changed from being fur to being feathered, a gradual shift of elegance and paramount spectacle, seeing the wings bellow and flap with the ease and grace I'd expect from my wife's curt smile and my daughter's own warm hug.

I was shook hard by Commander Thiocyan, slapping my helmet with his bare hand, my thoughts returning to the fact that this splendid sight was an enemy. It wanted me dead as much as I wanted it dead, and we both had blades, tips of our weapons, thirsting for the blood of each other. My fist yearned to punch through that armor, into the very innards of this enemy, and rip its black heart out to show the cruelty of those Pheraean dogs. By the same token, my enemy would parade my body high into the sky before setting me in front of Pheraean children, leaving me unarmed and bound, for them to beat me till my bludgeoned death. Whatever it was, it was out to murder me, and I was here to murder it.

It took another dive, swiping the tips of the phalanx troop's spears, the thunderous smash of steel against steel, racking our five air-thrust phalanx formation to the side as it racked all five in one pass with its graceful lance. When it came down to sweep, five arrows sat to meet it, and when it sped away back to the heavens, five raced it. The Pegasus and the knight both masterfully looped around the arrows. They flew under them, over them, rolled around them, or dodged with a dancer's style or the ease of an insect over a stale pond to simply glide over its murky surface. After this abomination of the Pheraeans would sweep down, looking to snare a head leaning too high, it would go back into the heavens for a moment, or a minute, before sweeping down again. Once, it tried to fly away, trying to go higher than our arrows could reach.

Nitrat led, running out to the side of the barricade, firing off three arrows as quick as he could, showing that no barrier had height limitations. The horse nayed, swooping downwards, then spinning in a downward spiral, leveled out and made a course for us. Nitrat turned, running back to our barricade, my voice a mute yell among twenty-four others, and my own head incapable of hearing a thing as my heart beat heavily in my helmet, each thud could have been the hammer of a blacksmith, and I the sword to be forged. He turned to fire one more arrow, leaping back at us, the bow's string ringing out its peculiar twang as he was swallowed up by our ranks. He quickly made his way to his feet, the phalanx troops shifting to point their spears angled at the oncoming enemy as he stood and readied another from his sling.

The rider slapped the spears again with its twirling lance, but as it did, the extended blade in its right hand to knock the spears' heads, its left swept around, nimbly contorting to throw an arrow, an arrow that this beast had actually managed to catch, and hurtled it back down into the brief exposed area between the javelin barrier. It hit one of the soldiers holding a javelin up, ripping through his flesh between his neck and his chest, right through his mail, and through his collarbone. The long arrow had a few inches left showing, the wound quickly producing blood as he fell back, his spear falling to the ground in his clinched hand while the wood bounced back and forth. He clenched his teeth, looking at the arrow, unable to move, shivering.

Commander Thiocyan looked at the sky shocked, then back down at his troops. He moved quickly to the soldier's side, looking at the arrow that had gone vertically down into his chest. He coughed, nodding to Thiocyan. The commander closed his eyes, using his index finger to move the man's chin up. "Look now," he muttered. "This enemy has killed a brother of ours, Sir Francium, Third Phalanx of the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus. It will not take mercy on us, and is no amateur. We fight an enemy that is capable of not wounding us, but killing us. Take no mercy on this lecherous dog of a Pheraean, for the bitch of a country has equally vomitous offspring, and will hire putrid stench beasts of the same ilk to do its bidding! May Saint Elimine guide your soul to happiness, my friend..." he trailed off, grabbing his dagger. Thiocyan's eyes were still closed, but he knew what he was doing as he made a quick cut through Francium's throat, one side to the other. The commander then grabbed the spear from Francium's twitching hand, kneeling where the missing phalanx troop ought to be. "Keep formation!" he yelled.

Something inside me at that moment broke. I was used to death. I had killed many people. My mother died when I was a child. I killed my first man when I was twelve; a robber tried to steal from my hut at twelve and I stuck him on his way out. My father died two years after I left to become a knight from a plague sweeping my village. I, too, had met death and cheated his grip with my vice and penchant to give him more souls in the return of mine, like any Fourth. But, something unsettling hit me. I looked at Sir Francium, his eyes visible through the small slit on his steel helmet, looking at me. They stared into infinity, gone beyond vitality, but they stared at me, and I couldn't help but stare back. I hadn't seen many true Fourths die, and I knew, at that moment, me being a Fourth meant nothing. I was as vulnerable to an enemy as any child or woman, and my mortality was just as fragile. The blood thickened on his neck and chest, pooling in his armor and dripping to the dry, cracked earth, ripped like an old man's skin and holding no life but the withered weeds. I heard the far off cries of the attack coming again, the men's grunts and growls as the enemy clashed to the spears again, rattling them with its own weapon, but I was gone, staring into the lifeless eyes of Sir Francium. I was brought back by the slap of Commander Thiocyan's open hand, the rattling of my helmet against my skull putting me back into my life, showing me this was tangible, this was real, not any dream. My life was as weak as any other's. I now noticed my moment was here.

The air seemed to change around me. I looked up at the sky, noticing the different hues of blue tinting the sky as the sun played its luminescent games on the edges of the horizon and every crack of dirt, off of my sword and armor, off of everything. The wind blew a harsh wind, one that was cold and bitter. I took a deep breath, feeling the tingle rape my lungs, proving to me I lived, I was alive. I looked again to the sky, seeing the figure bound down, slashing at the spears with a titanic calamity, followed by the distant sounds of whispers as the arrows traced its flight. Except, instead of continuing its parabolic journey, it instead twisted on the edge of its swoop, turning around in mid-flight, rasping the air and phoning the nay of the horse before jetting again at us. The knight atop the horse seemed one with the animal, both leaned forward in a speed-gaining advantage, the wings flapping furiously in a pursuit angle, as if to bomb us like the catapults of Pherae. It wasn't high up enough to be a landing, but instead, was more flat. Our phalanx troops moved quickly to try and set up a spear barrage to the side it attacked, but weren't fast enough to the perfect grace of the animal. The first phalanx who started to lower his spear was disarmed, his spear being sliced in two by the swooping lance of the enemy, then grabbed by the fierce hand of my flying nemesis, and the Pegasus flew upward, kicking off the ground with its heels. It soared into the heavens, then swooped down again, the heel of my comrade held in its grasp. He yelled for help, being tossed and turned around as the animal barreled through the sky. Our phalanx troops had their spears up again, and as the beast passed, and then let the body drop onto the spears of my brothers. His armor crunched in as he slid down the spears, past the steel, onto the wood, splintering it and breaking with the weight.

His death was quick, one spear through his chest, one through a leg, and the third through his neck. The armor had given way, looking like tin to the force which the body was thrown onto them. His blood splattered all of us, his last scream as he fell echoing with the gorged gurgle of his last escaping breath. He fell to the ground, all five phalanx spears now gone. They drew their auxiliary swords as Thiocyan moved forward, kicking the man's body over. He was dead, and Thiocyan took a moment to shut the poor soul's eyes before letting him pool in his own blood with the splintered shafts of wood and three spear heads sitting like roots of an inverted plant springing from the infertile ground.

"Kill this demon in any way possible!" he screamed, knowing our tactical advantage was gone. The enemy hovered in mid-air, a few hundred feet above us, the loud gusts of wind from each flap of the Pegasus' wings like a challenge, a mockery of what the Fourth Regiment stood for. Our archers fired off arrows, the knight rearing back as the horse seemed to fall backwards while flipping, then jetting forward, twisting as it did. The knight had its sword extended as it flew low while twisting, holding tight to the saddle to not fall off. The sword slashed through a comrade's head, the helmet flying off like a dejected ball, the force not only sending the soldier flying to his back, but the top of his skull caved in, his eyes a mess of bone and tissue that all melded into one grotesque picture. He twitched for only a moment, then died.

The knight turned at the end of the swoop, about to engage in another when a volley of arrows met it. At first, it seemed as if it swatted them from the sky, but Nitrat kept firing. He was furious, reaching for arrow after arrow, firing them off with the renowned precision of a member of the Fourth. While the rest fired in volleys, he was shooting as many as he could. The tactic was to conserve ammunition and launch as many as possible at once from as many bows at once, putting a lot in the air without ammunition constraints, but he just kept rifling them through his bow. It seemed worthless, the floating Pegasus not worrying as the Knight sliced each shaft from the air, but then something unexpected happened. One of them hit the knight, the ornamental armor making a loud creak as it caved inward. The arrow fell dejectedly, no blood to its shaft, but the force was enough to send the knight into a state of remiss and confusion for a moment, then toppled. The body fell a good twenty feet, hitting the ground with a tough thud. We all rushed quickly onto the enemy, but it was about two hundred feet out from our cluster. Before we could even reach the enemy, it was standing, lance in hand, whistling at its ride.

Nitrat fired another arrow, scaring off the Pegasus to return to the sky. A comrade of mine ran ahead of me, jumping to get a powerful, downward slice on the knight. With a nimble sidestep, the Pegasus Knight slapped his head with the blunt side of its lance, then swung it around to stab under his arm pit, stabbing deep at first, then pushing further before ripping it out, splashing an arc of blood on the ground. He fell down, and it grabbed up his loose weapon. Nitrat fired another arrow at the knight, whizzing by my head, which was deflected, before being engaged by a comrade knight of the Fourth. They exchanged blows for a few moments, blades clashing in iconoclastic irony as one weapon was forged in a foreign land, but the other, in the enemy's hands, was one of my kinsmen. That sword was then left in my comrade's torso as it slashed down from the shoulder, square into his chest, a large vertical cut slicing anything that was in the way, leaving no bone, organ, or tissue intact before it rested in his chest. He fell to his knees, then was kicked to the dust with the foot of the knight, its eyes turning to the next victim.

This enemy, this Pegasus Knight, was quick. The frame was much too small to be that of a burly man, like us Fourth, and the movements were so quick they could be confused with a muse's as she would be enchanting kings with stories of far-off lands. The way it fought was mesmerizing, as if poetry had found physical form, mixed with the brutality of war. Each slash echoed reverberating sounds of metal or the dying screams of my comrades, before their mouths were shut by the knight. One of my friends engaged her, slicing, then blocking, then stabbing, and dodging, until finally, a single blow was ill-placed and he received a punch to the throat as the enemy danced out of the way. It used the opening, as he stumbled back, clutching his throat, to kick him to the ground and stand over his body before stabbing downward into his torso.

Then, Bario attacked as it pulled its weapon out. He tackled the enemy with all of his might, both of them tumbling beyond the body, kicking up a cloud of brown dust. Bario had managed to disarm the lithe antagonist, the sword rumbling in a small patch of dirt until it sat quiet. The enemy was getting knocked around, and I saw the first trace of something weird. Hair, but not any ordinary hair, but a long string of purple hair, braided hair, with an ornamental bow on the end. I didn't have time to think, and I ran to catch up to Bario. He made a few punches, straddling the body with his ironed fists before the enemy managed to grab him by the collar and toss his body off of its waist. It then made a quick stand to move, and then kicked Bario in the face, crunching his helmet in with the blow. We were catching up, but the battle kept moving farther away, and us older soldiers were no match to run up quickly. My face was flustered, my helmet wet with my precipitation, and my breath haggard. My lungs burned with the ache of fire, each breath a stinging reminder of my frail age and mortality, something I never felt before.

Bario moved to stand, removing his helmet, showing a cracked face spewing blood. As he stood hazardously, no sense of balance, the enemy ran towards him, grabbing Bario's own dagger from his hip, and placed it squarely in his gut. He fell backwards, a shriek of pain echoing into the dry desert, then fell flat. His hand grabbed a weed in the ground, ripping it from the root up, his pain unbelievable as his other hand ripped the dagger from his belly, the armor he wore crying as much as his face did as it was pierced. The enemy made a quick movement, rolling over to its lance, then whistled for its horse.

The Pegasus tried coming in for another swoop to pick up its master, but was only granted an arrow in its shoulder by Nitrat's steady bow that was quick to let another one fly into the brisk afternoon. The knight turned, seeing its Pegasus wounded and retreating, the next arrow hitting the enemy in the forehead. For a moment, all went still, the distinct pang of the arrow on armor sending all of us into a state of wonderment. Is it dead? Did Nitrat kill it with his sure aim? The enemy fell backwards, and I ran closer, trying to catch up. Every step I took, the battle moved farther, and my comrades passed me. The shine of the helmet gleaned in my eyes, showing it rolling off of the figure whom it was attached to. Then, the body moved, sitting up, showing a small trail of blood running down its forehead, pooling on the nose and dripping off. No, no longer an it...a she.

This is my moment. You're placing me back here, into my life, no longer leaving me to show you why I am here, but leaving me to be here. What...how...gone is that feeling of floating, and now, here I stand. This dirt under my feet, this sword grasped in my hand, the sweaty steel of my helmet making that air bounce back into my eyes and my heart beat the only sound I can hear, like war drums. Then, everything disappears to me. That enemy stands, and rushes. Another soldier ahead of me attacks, but is quickly thrown off. He throws his sword in a wild slice, which is blocked by this female, as she leans down to pick up a new sword from the ground as her lance blocks him, then ducks and swivels, slicing off his leg at the knee. He topples forward, his face meeting the ground while a plume of dirt kicks up around him. She rears back and kicks the helmet with a furious glee in that motion, and I watch the body contort to that blow, flinging back a foot, then twitching. She kills him, another man dead at this...girl's hands. And, she doesn't stop, she takes that sword, still lingering the blood and dirt on its edge, and smashes it downward into his face, leaving the blade stuck into his brain, still erect as her hand leaves it, waving in his sinew.

Damn you, Pherae. You send these harmless girls after us, to fight us! What cowards! They train their females to kill, and with such ruthless efficiency, with such unbelievable corrupted souls! Their lives, ruined, their intuition, lost, and their innocence...as innocent as I can predict for a person who would throw a soldier of their enemy into their enemy's spears or kick the face in of another defenseless man. I know not what beasts brew in the minds of Pheraeans, but I know that their lies, their deceit, and this war, their war, it's worthless. As worthless as the damn sky, idly becoming night, then shining victory uninhibited to whomever stands the next day! It shines for the victor, whoever may win, and that victor could be the morally corrupt, the decayed evil, the imperceptible ruin of our world, and it would still be the day of glory for them! What divine justice may perceive to let atrocities, such as this...a girl, a ripe female, to possess that murderous rage? By Saint Elimine...

She rushes at me. She swings with that lance of hers in a diagonal fashion, I block it. She turns quickly off of the glint of the blade, slicing horizontally to my other side, I block by turning my blade vertically. She then pivots again, moving forward all the while, stabbing at my gut as her long weapon wraps around her lithe body. I dodge to the side, and raise my blade. I'm going to strike down, kill her, she's my enemy. My moment of hesitation hurts, her eyes locking on mine and my weak morale, as she turns and stabs me in the arm with the sword. I falter back, and she attacks me again.

Her open hand keeps punching at my exposed parts, like my neck or my useless right arm. I can't bring myself to do anything but block, looking into her face makes me unable to attack. Every opening I see, where a soldier should attack, I let it close, without moving to attack. A furious elbow knocks my helmet off of my head, ripping the leather strap in two. I falter back, feeling my nose gushing blood that splatters onto my hand, grabbing my face. She runs at me again, sweeping my face in a kick as I fall to the ground, swallowing dirt. I stood up, blocking more slashes, falling behind all the while. Her face...it's unbelievable. The hate, the furious anger, can she not see I feel pain? Can she not see I do not attack her? Her right slashes furiously; I am unable to block them all. Most of them hit my armor, denting it inward, shattering bones and bruising muscles. Her fists pummel my skin. I yell with each blow, feeling my leg crumple, then my neck collapse under that mighty fist, then I feel a stabbing pain in my right arm as her blade cuts my wrist off, the blade falling idly to the ground. She kicks my knee out, then stabs me through the shoulder as I fall backwards, pinning me to the ground.

I'm crying, I can't stop it. I have mortality. My moment, the moment I lived, is the moment I realize I can't keep living. The moment I live is so I can die. The one moment that defines me, as a person, is to die here, realizing my folly, to realize what wrong I have committed. I have lived to see that I may not live. Not to see my daughter grow into the figure that men chase, and not to see her wedding as she smiles that blushing smile and the man she marries becomes a fine gentlemen of the court of the Canton of Laus. I may not grow old with my wife, lie by her side in our dying days, and collapse of my old age, with scars and pride of Laus, and I may not be buried next to my father, and my father's father, with their honor and glory of living through their days as a Knight in the service of Laus. I'll not have my brothers in the Fourth there to see me off to the next world, to donate to me their last memories, and each of them to give my coffin their collective daggers. I'll not be there for any of it, because now, I stare up, on a worthless battlefield, at the face of the person who will kill me.

The Pegasus Knight stands before me, placing her boot on my chest as she rips the lance from my shoulder, pulling dirt and clods of roots into my blood and tissue as she does so. I scream, it hurt so bad. Tears flowed from my eyes. I tried reaching up to her, but my arm wouldn't respond. I wanted to ask her why, why someone like her would murder, how she could be here. I have no reason but that my life made me it, but one so fare as her...how? I want to scurry away, run, crawl, but my legs burn with the pain of bleeding and broken bones. I'm looking around furiously, I see my brothers are too far to save me. Nitrat reaches for another arrow, but finds his quiver is empty, flagging another archer, with a yell I can't hear, to shoot her before I die. Brother, save me! My blood pools around me, I can feel some of it touching my hair now. My helmet's lying next to me, but she kicks it away. She then lets the tip of her lance rest on my throat, in-between links of my mail.

She is beautiful; I can only see bits and pieces through my teary eyes and erratic breathing. It hurts to live, to breathe, to exist. I want to see something else, something more, live more. I'm not allowed to. She's beautiful, so amazing. A frail face, she couldn't be more than eighteen, if even that. Round curves that set limply between two sets of curly, light-purple hair with a tied ribbon at the bottom of each braided column of hair. She has huge eyes, ones I could see my pathetic reflection in, an azure blue that blended in with the sky. Her face is contorted, the heavy breathing of her figure and the scowl on her face telling a different story than her beauty. Her eyes are lined in dirt and tears, I don't understand it. She's...crying? Her Pegasus nays in the sky, circling me. A small set of beads adorn her forehead, ones that shake with every breath she takes, every contortion of her exhausted body. Her arm is shivering, her gaze unsteady, but her eyes filled with evil, with pain and agony. She hates me, I don't hate her. I love her. She's shown me my moment. I can hear Nitrat's voice, his plea, I hear Thiocyan's growl, their padding footsteps, and she rears up with the lance above my face.

I see my daughter in her eyes. Slowly, her complexion changes, those purple pig-tails into long, curly blonde hair, her cheeks filling with freckles, and there's my wife, standing over her. I reach my hand out, I can move again. I stand, looking at both of them. The bodies slowly move, they're gone. No blood is on the ground, my armor gone. I go to grab my daughter, and hug her. She moves away, so does my wife, I stand up, and I run to her. She's moving father, farther...no, no, come back for me! Do not leave me! No, sky, stop fading, I see your blue, your black is not there! There's light left! You're there, the horizon, I'll find you, I'll always come for you! Stop...please...I love you...I am worthless without you, I am worthless...


	2. The Justified

**_The Justified _by Zeronova  
34,000 words / One-shot (series)  
Posted on Sunday, December 25th, 2005**

**Disclaimer: I do not own Fire Emblem 7: Rekka No Ken, nor will I ever. Nintendo owns it, and they do so with the sole goal of wasting my money, time, and life. They're good at it, too. Please do not use any of my ideas or story, unless you contact me and ask about it, and discuss it with me, and in that case, I'll be happy. I love to proliferate a sort of fan-continuity, so just contact me and it'll be fine.**

**This story is rated T. It contains harsh language, and intense violence. Don't read it if you might be offended.**

**This story has been written because The Moment was so popular. P Really, this is part two of a four part series. While The Moment was supposed to be different, this pushes the envelope in some serious brutality. I hope that you can look past not liking some aspect to realize that it's good you don't like an event/character, because I have done my job. If you read it, please leave a review, and enjoy!**

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Three days ago, I thought I could determine what was right and wrong. I thought I had the internal bearing, a moral fiber that could tell me if something was wrong or right. I ran my life on doing what I deemed right, even though I mostly did wrong. And yet, here I stand, not able to decide. Everything I think, or thought, I knew about right or wrong, has no more meaning, no compass. My internal sense is spinning, it has no North. Right is as right as wrong, and wrong is as right as wrong. I can't decide, I can't understand, this feeling, how is it possible?

Somehow, along this journey, I have come to a point where everything I know, what I believed, has come to scrutiny of some omnipotent being. I'll not question who, or what, you are, whatever being has come to rip me from this moment. What makes it special, for you to slow it all down, let my beading sweat lazily tickle my skin, and to watch my eye-lid slowly cover my iris, with the speed of the Bern trees molasses' on the trade routes.

I used to think I knew what right was, and I used to think I knew what wrong was. There's no real way of right or wrong, especially to know that the actions we take have no real consequence. When we're taught to abide by some divine law, that we do things in the name of a higher power, we tend to follow it. But, I've seen things…things that make me realize there is no right or wrong. I can't even begin to describe how empty I feel, knowing that every shred of morality has been stripped from my being, knowing that the difference of right and wrong is only the groggy misconceptions of disillusioned and delusional men.

It would be right, standing where I am now, to simply step forward. My sword's tip etches his throat, and yet he smirks. It would be right for me to just stab him through, skewer his neck to the post behind him, end his life, and be done. I'd return, get my bounty, and be done. But, I can't. I lunge forward to do it, but my body won't let me. I can't, no mater how hard I push with my body, trying to shut my mind up, it doesn't let my blade dig into his scarred flesh. What right or wrong exists here! It is right to kill him, he is not without a single piece of redemption, and I am here to do my job! Death is not right, but I am hired to do my job, and I can leave morality a hiatus as I do what my purpose in life is, but I cannot.

And yet, somehow, I know the past three days have brought me to this moment, have got me with the tip of my blood-slicked sword resting at his apathetic throat. He smirks, letting a puff of smoke exit his nostrils, reaching for my sword. Is it right to kill him now? He is moving, I should kill him, get my bounty, I must! But, I cannot. Where have I come from, to denounce all bits of my morality, what I have lived my life by, in knowing right and wrong by only looking at it, to now be prey to indecisiveness and confusion? Never have I known that, never. I am not one who should be shown the merits of a conscious, nor am I one who is subservient to the ideals of gray existing in the monochrome dichotomy of benefit and detriment. I shouldn't be here, I shouldn't. Three days ago, I know I shouldn't have taken the job. It started more than three days ago, home, leaving out to get where this exhibition of the dark nature in the heart of every man began.

I was fresh. I left Bern not but five days ago, and I was already in Lauan country. The journey was rough, but I wasn't alone. It's never easy leaving Bern, or even getting there. It's a mountainous country, land-locked with its natural defenses. I remember leaving it clearly, it was something I've done more than once, and I return frequently. My town isn't far out from the Bern castle, but we're not close enough to be part of the serf village at its base. The people of my village are nomadic by nature, but our houses remain firm. It's as if our hearts stay cemented and rooted in Bern, despite that not a damn single one of us cares to stay in one place for long, and yet we all gravitate back, at one time or another.

I guess, in a way, it's like death. We go there every now and then, if you're in my job, but you get to come back, as if a check-up with your sins. My sins, however, are so piled up that not even a town's well can hold them, and so they wait, waiting for the doctor to walk by and check them off, but he has an infinite line to scour. My sins, they're definitely wrong. I thought they were, at least. It is murder to kill someone, it is thievery to steal, and it is wrong to lie. No one can dispute that, but even now, I find the meaning of evil to be faulty. But, I can't tell how worthy sins are even more, more so than deeds of faith. I can't come to bring myself to do what would be considered good, and I certainly can't deem it bad. It simply exists, one way or the other, and while I could always discern something for an innate value of being vital or lethal, now I have absolutely no way of telling.

I had slept at home before I left to Laus. That was five days ago, I said that before. The house was the same as always, but that's because no one lived there. My mother had died when I was nine, and I had been the tenor of that small hut, slapped together with her bare palms and whatever man was a part of her life at that time. And, yet, it stood. The single mattress we had was the same, with the lumps of where I sat on the edge still embedded in its straw-veins, and the skin, a white sheet, cold and unforgiving, sat like an old woman's wrinkles atop it. It needed to be washed, but might not in years, if I only slept on it five times in the course of those two. I had no food there, but everything was always where I left it. The only difference I saw every time I got back was the growth. The sharp weeds would snare the side of the hut, running up its side and planting its roots into the dirt plastered to the sides of the bricks, as if to say that one day, I would get back and they'd have changed the locks, and own my home. Dust had settled on the table, over the shelves, on everything. Even the old painting of my mother, from when she was only a child, with my grandmother, was fading. It was ripped in the corner, the wooden frame was rotting, and it was covered in some sort of dust that sapped the color from it. I left that morning, not caring about even locking the door, knowing no one else in the village would touch my house. I had nothing of value anyways; I wore everything that mattered to me.

A pack of nomads were coming through the town, and I joined with them that morning. We'd travel in packs, and eventually come to towns. A few would leave the group, finding whatever it was they were looking for while others were welcomed into our journeying family. None of us knew each other or talked much, but we needed each other for hunting, for shelter, and for protection. Never was this pack the same six months later, not a single person remained that was there. They looped, going town to town, almost on schedule, and I jumped in with them. No one cared, they welcomed the presence with a grunt and them all agreeing on where to go next. They were heading for Pherae ultimately, but before, they had to go to Laus and Caelin. A few of the men needed to go to those cities, and the group would go, and in plus, it was on the way. So, we set out. We all slept in our own tents, and when we found us a beast, we'd all eat it silently. No words were exchanged; it was just the traveling pack of nomads, feeding off of each other's presence to get us through. We all knew each other--as well as strangers could know each other—while living in an odd relationship of unspoken brotherhood. It was like a disjointed family, as if I had ever known any other, in that sometimes we saw familiar faces. It'd be a year later, and I'd notice one man whom I had seen the last year in the pack, and he'd be going somewhere new.

But, that was my life. Half of my village was always gone, out, who knows. A lot of the males were in service of the Bern army, and a lot of the females would just be a mercenary, or working, or something. Could have been a ghost town to any passer, but it was a real monument of the nomadic lifestyle. We all came back every now and then. It's just how life was. You always need to know where you came from to know where you're going. And, there was no right or wrong in me forsaking my home for the other horizons, it was just life. I couldn't have thought it was wrong to do what I do, and I couldn't think that it was right to leave my home. It just is an action I've done, no judgment for it, not anymore. My guilt for leaving my town has vanished, with every other trace of judgment I once had. I did it, and that's that. There's nothing to say, for whether I did something beneficial or harmful, it is done and what has been done is, invariably, done. Back then, I might have seen it one extreme, but now, I see it only as operation, no stamp on purity or sin.

We got to Lauan country soon. It wasn't hard to tell we were there: the landscape was a dead give-away. Getting out of Bern was tough, but I was used to it. My skin was leather from birth; it was my father's skin. I have the rough elbows that come to a sharp point, the cheeks that show no supple beauty, but the abrasive firmness of strength, and I have scars. I am a product of Bern. The grass is as lethal as the mountains there, and I am an offspring of that region. While some of the nomads can't stand it, and indeed, one did die, most are used to it. Bern sits on the plateau of the mountain ranges, and if you try to leave, well, good luck. Getting up is a feat, but getting down is a matter of luck, if you're not used to it. The sides of the mountains are like slides, steep and accepting for anyone willing to lose footing, but treacherous. Jagged rocks spike out from the side, leaning upward to skewer through any fool who couldn't handle the fall. Large areas become completely straight, as if to invite people to die in its gorge with the other bodies, the graves of the unfortunate dating back many generations. Perhaps one of my kin lies in those innumerable death pits on the Bernese Mountains, I'll never know. The cold, as well, is as harsh as the topography. It bites you, right onto your open skin, and doesn't let loose. It cuts down to the bone, and you will never forget it. The ice latches to your packs and your armor, the snow finds solace in the crook of your arm, and the icy wind rubs your chin raw. When again you see grass, you love it, and when you see grass, it always cuts.

The grass before Laus, the dried and yellow death, the crumbling dirt and barren plains, those are welcome. They're warm, they're flat, and they're not out to claim bodies. Instead, they're the carcass. They're the rotting flesh of this world, the death apparent all over them. Not of bodies or of nations, but of life itself. The only things that grow is the crab grass that nips at open toes and holds snakes, ready to bite you in ways the wind could only envy. Icy fangs have only passing filial affair with poisonous ones, and the plains wish to show you that. It's not wrong; it's just how it is. We made our way to Laus, even trekking through a small gully removed of water. It was like the veins of a broken heart that had long since withered, and the only epigraph was a single tree, clinging to the dirt like it was the carrion of the river's physical presence. What foolishness that tree was, as immobile as any other one who would cling to the lost and to the worthless. Leave your amenities to the dirt and to the heavens to sort out, don't concern yourself with the right or the wrong, just continue your existence. That tree symbolized everything worthless in morality, but then, I saw it as reaffirmation.

The grass changed to green, small bushes didn't wither in the sand and rip the worthless dirt, but, instead, stood firm and rustled in the wind. The ground became forgiving, alive, not crumbling. If I kicked it, it didn't bloom into a suffocating cloud of brown; rather, it chewed up grass in the heel of my boot. We got into the Cantons of Laus, and were soon met by the patrolling of guards. The normal regiments moved back and forth, their shining, light-blue armor an obvious sign of whom they were, added to the screaming commanders, while coupled with the Cantons of Laus insignia stamped on the center of their breast plates weren't either. They would flag us down, surround us, draw weapons, and interrogate us. They were in preparation to go to war with Pherae, it seemed, and every one of us could be a spy, a mercenary sent from Pherae to murder their Marquess, first and foremost. If I were them, I'd worry more about Sir Boies, Sir Bauker, and Sir Bernard. A king only tells an army what to do, but a tactician, they're invaluable. They'd never learn that though, and an enemy, a Pheraean, would understand that, and one man on the field would change the tide of all. He'd show them how to fight, not under a king, but under a man who knows war, and that tactician would fall this worthless country's foolishness. They let us pass after we verified we weren't out to kill their Marquess.

Even if I was, it wouldn't matter. Everyone carried swords, it was nothing new, and a lot of us were mercenaries. The world is rough, it's how it goes. If they ask me if I'm a mercenary, I say yes, and they ask if I have a job, I just lie and say no. What could they do, imprison every single mercenary and assassin? How about every thief? Every man with a sharp object? They were wrong to stop me; I was in no way going to harm their royalty. They were right, in their own eyes, to protect their Marquess. I, now, standing where I am, can see this. I can see the duality of decision, the duality of man. My haggard breath balances my face between the dim light, leaving half of my face in the darkness as my eyes trace the past. The duality of view point, decision, and morality. . . something I couldn't understand until now. However, it is of no consequence for me to think that I was right, because I only look out for myself. I am who I am, and that is what makes my own furthering and ideology worthwhile. Who gives a damn what a Lauan soldier thinks? Now, I can at least empathize, in the most minute ways, understand them, rather than instantly make the distinction of their clear-cut wrong over my imperceptible right. Right and wrong. . . how subjective those are. Ha, I'm quoting him…

They finally let us pass after they surveyed each of us in the pack. Once we were a whole again, we continued forward. It wasn't far from where we were stopped to Laus, since the patrolling units were, more or less, keeping a secure perimeter. We only had a little more walking, and we were in front of the massive draw-bridge of the central of the Cantons of Laus, the Hierarchy of the Cantons. It just so happened it was also the second to largest city in these lands, the largest belonging to one not very far off either. But, this is the one where the armies were situated, and this is the one where all of the royalty of each canton met, lived, and stayed. It was the heart of the Cantons of Laus, despite not being in the center or the largest city. The other largest city, Morina, was just a bunch of peasants, nothing really there but a lot of grain and goats.

The day was boring in Laus. I decided to depart from my nomadic group, knowing that they'd be back in a few months. I'd make my way until then, or go at whatever city I needed to go to next, albeit alone. But, I wouldn't be alone for long, it seemed. We entered through the main gates of Laus, which meant having the guards atop the archer racks authorize down below to the lowly soldiers to open the gate. They would tug on these ropes to raise the drawbridge, or let them go slowly to lower it. I kind of felt bad that these puny runts would have to hoist up that huge bridge once we entered, but seeing them, they needed it. I had been my way around; I knew that these kids were part of the Ninth Regiment of the First Laus. No doubt about it, the young and puny faces, the body's wrapped in armor that was munificent to even fit as it did, which was still far too large. Every person who had been around to the kingdoms of these lands knew the good units and the bad units. The Ninth Regiment of the First Laus was worthless, the Eighth Regiment of the Second Laus was excellent, the Second Regiment of the Fourth Laus was the most powerful, and the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus, well, they're something else.

That "something else" I'd soon find out to be insane. Not just a bunch of crazy soldiers, but truly mad. When we got into Laus, I left the group of nomads. I needn't say good-bye or tell them I was leaving; I just went my separate way. Once we all got in, we all huddled and agreed to meet back at dawn, here, to leave to Caelin. I didn't stay for the conversation, I just left halfway through, knowing I wasn't going to be with them. Laus, in the middle of this war, is going to need a mercenary with my skills. I have more than a man could have, and I'm just as deadly. Someone like me, they're a hot commodity. But, I wouldn't be doing it at three hours after the high sun mark, so I needed to kill some time. Night life was always more fun, in many ways

For starters, I found lodging. Any inn would do, but I needed one that would respect a person such as me, meaning no tenor houses for whores and prostitutes. I'd find my pleasure through my own ways, not that of monetary gain. The first two inns I went to, I found them less than satisfactory. Fat men ran them, whose eyes lit up with thoughts once they saw me. I needed not a man to peruse my belongings, or try to step into my quarters in the middle of the night. I wouldn't find a female-run inn, but a man with a family, he would have more morals, I'd hope. Morals to me, then, were important. Without morals, life couldn't be lived by any standard, any bearing of right or wrong to guide yourself. Without them, you'd be an animal, who knew not the difference in its food and its droppings, not knowing which one was more appetizing. No, I was above that, I knew a right and a wrong. I thought I did.

As soon as I walked in, I was greeted with the shrill cry of a baby. The man was renting the upper portion of his large house out to vagabonds, both permanent and over-night. The jingle of a bell when I entered had him walk out of a side-room, wiping his face tiredly. He had circles under his eyes, and I could hear his wife's piercing complaints chase him out.

"Yeah? " he asked without much emotion, grabbing out the large book from a shelf on the under-side of desk. He flipped it open, turning it to me, handing me a quill pen. "Single night, sign here with the date. It's four gold per night," he said. I obliged. It was more than other inns would let me, but considering he had a newborn, as no woman is that active unless she's just getting over birth, or her child is old enough to speak and leads her down the path of insanity, I paid the fee. Anywhere in-between, a mother was pretty calm and reasonable. He graciously thanked me, handed me the archaic key, and left. I stuffed it into my satchel, then approached the room. I noted to myself that I'd blot out my name in his record book when I left in the middle of the night, as I needed no traces. A mercenary shouldn't be famous, and they don't need to leave traces either. I'd go over my name with a few, liberal spots of ink. The quill I used to sign my name was too fine to just scratch it out; I'd have to completely blot it out. Hopefully, he wouldn't remember my name. My face, he probably wouldn't, as he looked at me for a total of two moments before returning to the other room. He had surrendered to his wife, instead of arguing, knowing she wasn't quite all there at the current moment. That took a lot of guts, to swallow his pride.

Once I got to my room--one of five rooms up the stairs--I entered it slowly. I couldn't be too cautious, and it didn't help that their bickering was loud. Setting down my sack, taking off my breast plate, and un-strapping my sword, lying them all on the bed, I noticed that I was directly above them. Slowly dropping to the floor boards, I looked through the open spaces, seeing his bald head reflecting the flickering fire, and her form, holding the baby, yelling with a reckless sense of strength and anger she really shouldn't have, considering the age of the baby. Y'know, it's probably one of those post-birth things. I'd not know, I've never been pregnant, nor do I plan on it. Funny though, I probably should by now. I stood up, trying to block out their yells of what to name the baby, how he doesn't pay enough attention to her, and that she saw him look at me in some sexual way. Yeah right, lady, he was scared shitless of you.

I moved to the mirror, looking over myself. The windows were drawn open and inviting, with a long row of potted flowers sitting on the windowsill. Undoubtedly, the clamorous wife was a house-keeper by nature. The sheets were tucked perfectly, the room freshly dusted, and it had been kept impeccable. If she were renting out the rooms of her spacious house as an inn, she'd at least want to make it presentable, no qualms in that business strategy. Admirable, I thought. That's how things should be, but looking back, I see the action simply as an extra move, not something worthy. I sat on the stool in front of the mirror, looking over my reflection. If I were going to go that night to find a job, I'd need to prove I was able to do the job. Those long tufts of rusted red hair I had, they'd do me no good. I'd look like any other of a thousand mercenaries looking for a job, and Laus really didn't need too many right now. At least, not ones like me. They needed troops, fighters, ones to win the war against Pherae in the upcoming days, when they would siege Caelin. I was just a fool, a blemish. I needed to be seen as a killer.

I had a few scars, but not any visible. My chest wasn't the most open of things I show to people, but I did have one there, on my left breast. My arms had plenty of cuts, gained as a child on the sides of the mountains of Bern, but they weren't good enough either. I sighed, knowing what I would need to do. I hadn't found it hard to get work in other cities, but the one difference here was that Laus was mobilizing for total war, they'll see one like me as a worthless piece of trash. To them, to these hardened men who are used to seeing soldiers of the Fourth Regiment bash down their enemies with ruthless efficiency, I was just another attempted mercenary who couldn't be worth the time to even speak to. Shames most "mercenaries" were weak fools that thought they could handle it, and when it came down to it, couldn't cut that throat or spear that mark, and end up giving the most of us bad names, especially ones like me. I thought it a wrong assumption, a stupid one, but really. . . it was just incorrect, inaction, not wrong. Right and wrong are so subjective, because now, I see that it does have merit; most assassins like me are worthless. Maybe they're right, and I'm dumb, but I've killed my share and tasted my own blood, but I am in no position to judge my credibility, except, except now, standing here. How am I any better than those whom I demean now?

What do you think of me then, Saint Elimine? These brown eyes, unattractive, dirty, do they inspire a well of a soul for you to peer into? How about this rusty hair? It isn't so much straight, or so much curly, it's dry and brittle, frayed by the sun and worn by sweat. Do you think it a sign of beauty? What of this face? Cheeks rubbed raw by wind and fists, no longer giving the blush of a maiden but the visage of a warrior. And, these hands, this heart. . . what's there? Do you count these hands, ones which have killed over forty men, and this heart, incapable of loving, do you find them so wicked? Do you deem them wrong? Nothing of the sort, they're mine, how can you say I am wrong? I lived by what I knew was right, only doing wrong acts to get by, and I knew I could be forgiven for them. How is the daughter of Cug Irona of the boundaries of Bern, a being capable of evil? I am not evil, I just act and do what I am predisposed to do, what I must. I am not right, I am not wrong, I simply exist, I see that now. Before, I thought myself incapable of wrong.

You would deny the very breath I breathe as wrong, and the life I live as unworthy. The judgment of those who spend all the time looking over others forget to look at themselves for true comparison and gauging. What of you, Saint Elimine? Your worthiness, your purity, your grace, your holiness. . . I deem it as worthless as you deem me. I would look to you for truth, for justice, for judgment, and for right, but not anymore. I have seen the extent of your judgment, or lack thereof, so how, how can you stand immobile in the heavens and preach your consequence-free law? You're wrong, you're evil, you've not a bit of good in your being, and you could say the same of me. Your word, the judgment of this world on whatever is done by anyone, is as worthless as those who live by such code. Loyalty. . . foolish ideals held by those who think that a right and a wrong exist, and they fight on the side of the former. I used to, but I can't find it anymore, I can't find justice in this world.

I picked up my dagger from my sack, leaving the leather flap untied, sitting back down in front of the mirror. I had to look the part to these men. In any other city, they'd not see me and instantly devalue me, but here, they would. I needed something more, something to show I meant business, and truly, I needed it. I leaned close to the mirror, wiping off a dirty corner with my sleeve. That wife would be angry if she knew I found a speck of dirt. Anyways, I continued on, bringing the tip of the knife to my face. As you can see now, whoever you are, you see what was done. I cut from my cheek downward to my jaw, grimacing as slightly as I could to not make the knife jump course. It was dumb, it wouldn't heal over quick enough for me to make it look authentic for tonight, but that's retrospective. I had to stop halfway and rub off the blood with my sleeve, mixing with the dirt, as any soldier who dies on the battlefield knows, then finished. I looked over myself in the mirror now, whispering to Elimine to know I do right, and the brief wrongs are only so I may continue the path of righteousness. I am not a monk, nor am I pious, but to think there is no retribution for the acts of the wicked is a lonely existence. . . one I now understand.

The left side of my face, still bleeding, was now sliced from my cheek to my jaw. It wasn't deep, and I hope it would scar, but I needed that added edge, I needed to look hard. I stood, walking to the bed to grab a rag to wipe my face off. I thought, what would they think of me? Sitting here, cutting my face, to look more like a mercenary? Would they snicker at my foolishness, turn their back in disgrace, or laud me for brilliance, or simply think "she's been around, she looks good enough for this job"? Whatever they did, I did my action in the name of right, to do what I found just and worthy. How dumb, how naive of me, to think such morals existed in such a world where we only are defined by the self-imposed restrictions we give ourselves.

I grabbed out one of my garments, wiping my face dry. It burned, the cut contacting the cloth. I think I could feel the individual woven threads scoping out the wound, as if to feel the inside of me, see what this was so different from what many men knew of the inside of me. I pulled it away quickly, looking at the rag. It was very nearly soaked, my blood streaked down, then smeared around the center of where I was wiping. Foolish, so foolish. I wish I thought things through sometimes; I was too impulsive, claiming all of my things were in the name of good. Maybe it was just trying to hide the fact I knew I was doing evil, but it kept me alive. This laceration would help; this would show those who need someone dead that I can do business. Any large, burly man would be instantly sought out to kill, but me? Now, that's a stretch. I had been at this job for seven years, I was nothing to be coughed at, but it's a shame when I can be over-looked. It was wrong for them to be so judgmental, and I was worth every single gold piece they could pay to any man who wielded a two-handed broadsword, but they would never see it, not unless I made them know. My job hired a tough lot, and I had to make it known I, too, was capable.

I waited until night fall to leave my room. I had no business in the urban environment sitting underneath the Lauan Castle. It was like grass, sitting under the foot of a person, looking up, wrapping around the boot that steps on its brothers. Even the tall blades of grass were tiny, compared to the man who stood in the center of the growth. The castle was that man, his foot the large, domed entrances, and his figure, towering high into the sky, the sides of the castle's towers, and the serfs were merely specks of dirt. I needed no weapons, no food, no items, no confession, no clerical advice, all I needed was a job, and I needed to wait until night fall for that. It gave me time to do two things: muse over the new wound, which seemed to get even worse as the hours went on, and ready my weapons. The skin got red, and it started burning, and not just like a fire's burn (I'd know, I've been tortured with fire on my arms), but, a rushing fire. If a crackling brook could be a creek of flame, this would be the emblem for its pain. But, when night came, it started to calm down, and even start to scab over. It looked pretty hideous, and didn't quite get the effect of being a scar that I wanted, but it worked out well enough. I needed to prove I was a real mercenary to whoever would hire me. Expectations were high in Laus, but not in Pherae. In Pherae, they hire all sorts of mercenaries. Looking back, if I had went there, I would have saved myself a lot, a whole lot. I would have saved my morality.

While I waited, I worked over my traveling sack. I looked through my bag, sorting out my items again. I still had the few changes of clothes, but most of it was just for wearing under my armor. I had kept some of it on, the rest of it strapped to my bag as I walked with the nomads. But, looking over it, I started to rub it, ready it up for whatever slung arrows would soon be hurled at it and swords would be unsheathed to glance from its dull luster. It was an average mercenary's armor, and had its share of battle damage. Admittedly, I didn't buy it new, but I had been the person wearing it when most of these marks, burns, blemishes, dents, and blood stains were thrown on it. All but three belonged to me. I wouldn't wear it tonight, no need to, which is why I needed something else to make me look like a mercenary. I rubbed a dry rag over it, buffing out the small dents, spitting on a bit of caked on blood in the rivets of the ornamentation on it, then wiped it clean. There was a name carved onto the side of the left shoulder piece, but I never really cared about it. I did now, because last job, I had slit a man's throat and he fell onto my shoulder, the blood spilling over the engraved name, and now dried inside of it, like an embossed crimson tombstone. I used my nail to peel it off, letting the pieces scatter in the air, seeing them floating in tiny specks in the waning light. That was the second bit of blood I had been with that day.

Blood was no issue to me. It was a normal thing, especially to a mercenary, but it didn't mean I liked it. I wouldn't flinch or squeal, I wouldn't be afraid of it, but I didn't have to like it. Same goes with death. I'm good at it, and it's something I specialize in, something I live to do, but I don't have to like doing it. I am not wrong for doing it, but I don't have to like it. I'm just. . . apathetic. Would I rather not? Perhaps, but I do it, regardless. It's who I am and how I live, and I did it in the name of good. I had to do what Saint Elimine made me good at, to continue to let me live, and maybe, one day, I'd do good, and my sins, my evil, would be forgiven, because it was only the path that brought me to that "worthy" pedestal I'd stand on. What worth, I see now, comes from lying to yourself? None. It only deepens the pit that you'll fall into when you die, being buried deeper with your own actions to haunt you.

Night fell like that of any normal dusk: slowly, with the waning rays lingering long enough to slice into my room and grace my feet. Eventually, they were gone, leaving only darkness. And, in that darkness came out the less-than-savory crowd which I was so accustomed to. They needed me, I needed them, it was a vicious circle, and we were all products of the night. Not a single thing that either one of us could do to try and change that, as if it would do anything, because somewhere out there was a man who had the same invariable magnetism to the shadows, and what those shadows carry. I take no blame or dissension for my choices, I make them with full view and knowledge of what they might entail, only hoping that my choice of wrong is later erased for the good I hold in my heart.

I slung my sword to my hip, the sheath tied to my belt and the sword sitting in it with a loose jiggle. I tied it roughly around my waist, letting it hang slightly, then adorned my side-dagger, the one I held underneath my arm-pit. Almost every single person who was familiar with war would carry a secondary knife, just for safe-keeping, always at arm's reach, not unlike where mine was. The Lauans usually carried theirs on the opposite side of their swords (assuming it was a Knight), but I hadn't the obtrusion of Knightly armor to make it so that I couldn't reach to my arm-pit. I tied my hair back, leaving only a few rusty strands to fall onto my face. I was wearing standard clothing of a mercenary; they were maneuverable, and showed a lack of formality, one that would signal me off to be an assassin. And, the fresh cut showed I meant business. I cleaned it one more time, using the appropriated bowl of water kept in that room for washing purposes. How long it had been there, who knows, but it was clean. I flushed my face for a moment, letting it sting, invigorating me and keeping me alive. Then, I was gone.

I left quietly, the bickering still filtering through the floor boards. It was nothing I could help, and I tried not to listen. She was going off, nothing could shut her up. I don't think I'd consider her wrong, but somehow. . . I could, knowing full and well that stupidity is just as wrong as a grievous err. How else can you explain a fool like Sir Boies, sitting in Laus with his armies, and yet about to be destroyed by Pherae's superior tactics? He had the numbers and the warriors, especially the Fourth Regiment, or so I thought. I exited quickly, shutting the door to the inn as silently as I could, as to not disturb them. My job as a mercenary revolves around silence, stealth, and cunning, so it didn't hurt to always be on the move to use these skills. Who knows if I was a hit to be tracked, so I had to make sure I was always prepared. I hadn't yet, but I welcome the opportunity. Before I left, I made sure to dab my finger in the ink bottle, then smear out my name in his large book, placing it back on the specific shelf it came from.

The pub was on the far-side of the small town. My eyes wandered up into the night sky, seeing the twinkling stars shining down. They were the only things I can now perceive to let judge, my eyes seeing them again where I stand, my sword to his throat. What think you, then, of what I do? What imperceptible view have you got? You're always there, just looking down, without bias or feeling, as perfect a judge of character as a sword is a judge of whether life or death can be granted by its tip. Your accuracy is that of a fine archer, and your view as infinite as a hawk's. I was shown this by someone, what can be a true judge.

And, yet, you remain firm, looking with a glazed eye that never blinks in disgust, raises an eyebrow in confusion, or sparks with joy. You just sit, unremarkably still, watching. The perfect judge must also judge accordingly, and those who watch with impossibly clear perception chose not to dictate what is right to those who need it. Worthless. What visage of man tries to judge others is only as fallacious as the very man who would make such an error-prone ideology. Let those beyond the grasp of this world, of Elibe, judge me, for no right or wrong exists, not for what has happened in these past few days. It all started here, and I could have just as easily walked away, not let it happen at all, and I wouldn't be here, but I can't change the past.

I strolled along, getting close to the pub. The dirtied windows showed men dancing inside, the door hummed with the songs of drunken men and then tapping of unbalanced feet. The candles flickered with a fierce smile equal to the joyous fools galloping around in an intoxicated blaze, as if to join in the hearty, belly-hoarse chuckle of the rest. I entered silently, sitting at the nearest, unoccupied table I could find. I didn't know the customs of Laus immediately, and relegated myself to stay in the shadows until I understood, at least on a basic level. I needed to get a job tonight, and if not a mercenary job, I'd find a way to make my money. But, not a single table was unoccupied, and instead, I relegated myself to taking an empty chair from a table and finding a wall to sit against.

The longer I sat there, the more I didn't understand. I knew who these people were; it wasn't hard not to notice. But, their demeanor wasn't anything I could consciously recall. I mean, I know how Pheraeans act. They're nice, until you get to know them, then their initial wax of friendliness wears off to a more flawed, human persona that's not as nice, but more acceptable, as if every one is trying to be heroes there, and deny their true flaws. Caelins are too timid to get anything done, which is why Laus took them over at the drop of a hat, despite local word talking otherwise, but I'm not going to argue governmental semantics and the lies it tells its people. Bern's too rough for any outsiders to get even a whisper, but Laus, wasn't anything I had ever seen before.

The back of the bar, the large barrels of drink back there, was being run by a stocky man, a large beard sitting over his rotund cheeks and chin, but his added girth looked good for grabbing and tossing out the drunken men when it came time to close for the night. He seemed to be the same caricature in every pub; a fat man with a glass in one hand and a rag in the other, searching out every speck of dirt in that glass and rubbing it raw before grabbing another from a soapy bath that all used cups went into. I wonder how clean they were when he was done, given his own filthy hands and the stained rag.

Most of the men there were soldiers of Laus. Their armor was how I knew, and it didn't hurt they were drunkenly chanting whatever rhyme they could think of for the love of their country and Marquess. A few men were dancing in the center of the room, the paid musician of the night sitting nearby, his hat open and over-flowing with small coins. A man walked by, slapping him on the shoulder, handing him a full mug, then continued onto the dancing. It was a natural style of music, almost folk, the men stomping and rearing to its consistent beat and twang sound. It was a genuinely fun atmosphere, I had to admit, and even if I didn't know any of them, or some of the local gibberish, I couldn't help but crack a smile at seeing the drunk men stumble as they tried dancing on top of the tables. Sitting on the outside of the entire group of soldiers, identifiable by his armor, was one whom I could unmistakably know as Sir Boies.

Standing where I am, my feet immobile, my sword quivering, I wonder exactly what would have happened had I not walked over to Sir Boies, had I not met that other mercenary, had I not gone this journey, and not be standing here in front of a legend. I don't know, but it's been something I can never forget, no matter what happens. My mind wanders; every second I spend here is a lifetime in some far away reach of my memory. My sweat falls off my face, and yet, it is as slow as the sap from a Bern tree, being collected for trade routes is. My eyes blink like they were fighting being ripped upward, inching over my iris, one speck at a time. Had I not walked over, gotten the job, had I not done a hundred things in the past few days, who knows? But, is it wrong to have regret? I can't tell anymore, is it regret or joy? Am I looking back, happy these events led me here, or sad, broken and disjointed, ready to snap? I can't tell, the extremes of every emotion playing their full symphony.

"Do it, if you please, I'll not stop you. But, ugly, yes. I know, it is all so ugly. But, I ask you, can ya find a single trace in ya, enty-uh body as to say that this barbarism, that these acts, do not have the faintest trace of response from you, merc'? What have you seen in my village? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, val-ah, rage, but truth, that you know 'uv. Truth, you've found that, haven't you? " he says to me, his words lipped in a whisper from a scarred and heavy face. He leans forward, shading his face in the dim moonlight, revealing a world-weary and injured face, eternally marked with the exploits of his past. Burn marks, a pierced cheek, a split lip, scars rippling from one side of his face to the other, and his eyes, removed of luster, but not any luster, two distinct levels of luster. I couldn't move, I couldn't say anything. I only delved back into my mind, leading me to here, wondering why my answer could be, how could I answer? I don't know. . . I don't know.

I was back in that bar, tracing myself to where he, the mark, spoke to me in such cryptic terms. Sir Boies was short himself, but still taller than the barkeep. His hair was non-existent, laced into the pores of his head with as much rooted fastidiousness as my loyalty for any worthless country. I approached him, observing as I slowly walked up. I came up to the side, clinging to the walls of the crowded bar, avoiding the dancing, intoxicated soldiers, which fell as much as they yelled. He seemed to be drinking his worries away, the bags under his eyes and the sunken face obvious of an underlying tension. He got another mug, and downed it quickly, adorning a quick, fake smile for a soldier who stumbled out of the party and came over to him to say something inaudible, all the while the dull roar of the rhyming saloon sonnets deafening any words spoken. The soldier jumped back in, grabbed by one who saw him fall out, and Boies was alone again, sighing. He turned his stool, looking back to the bar keep, who gave him a disgusted look of petulance.

"Fill it yerself," he muttered, walking away from Boies as I approached. The strongest of the triad of military might of the Cantons of Laus cursed something sluggish, then leaned over, filling his own cup with the turn of a nozzle from a barrel behind the counter. He leaned back, downing half of his glass, wiping his face in a boorish manner, noticing me sitting down stealthily next to him.

"Huh? " he said drunkenly. "Look, I ain't wantin' no whore tonight, lemme be. . . " he said, turning away from me. I grabbed the shoulder of his armor, turning him to me, his head flopping with little regard to look back at me, his blood-shot eyes telling me everything I needed to know. "Away!" he screamed angrily, a bit of spittle flying from his haggard mouth, and then finished his grog. I sighed, standing back up. Somehow, I knew that even what I did to my face wouldn't matter, they couldn't see and being drunk didn't help matters either. I went back and sat down at one of the tables, piercing eyes gazing around the pub. At that moment, I was angry, vehement, knowing that my fear had come true. I needed a job, I didn't have the money to just loaf around. Sure, I had enough to sustain myself for a month or two, but I didn't want to. I needed a mark to kill.

The men at the table were hardly noticeable of my presence. Two were passed out, one was staring idly at the ceiling, obviously spinning, and another looked hazardously as I sat. He looked me over for a moment, and I contacted his eyes, being completely stern. I was not in the mood to fraternize or be provocative. I thought I was looking at his eyes, at least. He was hooded, leaning low to the table, a rough, burlap-looking shawl drawn over his face. The dim candles did little to light the pub, but his hood left his face a blank slate of a protruding chin the only feature I could draw from the indistinct void in his black mask of darkness. He turned his body, looking over to the bar where I came from, then back at me. I just kept staring at him, my lip curling a little, my hand instinctively reaching for my dagger, slowly sliding it out and putting my hand back under the table.

I'd dealt with it before. Some morons would try to overtake me, drunk or not, and whatever seizure of my entity they had planned ended with the tip of my dagger in their throat, gut, or lower. Eventually, I worked up the nerve to speak.

"You lookin' for a good time, ya lookin' at somethin' that's gonna kill you. Get away," I muttered, with as much disdain as I could muster. I wondered the morality of the situation, what I had really boiled down to. Where had right and wrong come when I was one of only a few of my kind in the pub, the others being mistresses of the night, and I had been relegated to being seen as such, and even considering it. I know not, but neither would it be the first time. But, the times I had did that. . . I begged for forgiveness, and found my wrong less than the right I gained, the money I used later because of it. And, is it a sin to…enjoy?

The man chuckled an eerie, redundant voice, one which showed all of its flavors in one single sound, and then he stood up. The hood came down past his face, stopping about mid-thigh, covering over everything telling about him, although I did catch the glance of a sword held on a separate belt from the one that kept his trousers up, hanging lazily on his side. He turned, walking to the bar, the blade sitting in sheath and bouncing around laggardly, apathetic, about the back of his legs. I watched him, then scanned around, finding a set of eyes staring at me from the seat to my left. A drunken man, who was passed out, awoke, and was trying to say something to me. I grabbed the back of his head, and slammed his nose back into the table, where he grunted, and went back to a coerced sleep.

The man went and sat next to Sir Boies, leaned onto the counter and got two mugs. He handed one to Boies, who took it violently, drinking a good gulp before looking who gave it to him. I couldn't hear anything, or see their lips, the flickering light too tough to read them and the dancing buffoons too loud. The man had leaned in close to Boies, talking into his ear. His face pulled back, confused, then his ear returned to his concealed whispers. Finally, the two of them nodded, pulling back, knocking mugs, and finishing the beers. The hooded man stood, walked back over the table and sat down in front of me.

"Any questions?" he asked with a cocky grin that I didn't need to see to know it existed. I grunted angrily, grabbing a beer from the man whose nose I had broken, drinking the rest of his cup, shoving the glass forward over the table to the man. I angrily asked for my refill, knowing he wasn't a patron of the bar. "You see, little girl, you got two things wrong. First, you're in Laus, not Pherae. That crap won't fly. And, two, you're not good enough. "

"You don't even know who I am," I grunted.

"Do I need to? I saw you get shunned by Sir Boies, who is known to always have a job. You didn't try hard enough, you didn't do what it takes. Your job should be easy, look at you, you got figure and a gritty pretty to ya, it's what these men feed off of. Screw the purity of the virgins and the nobility; it's as carnal as the plains beasts. "

"You don't know my skill, and you're too scared to show your face," I responded. He moved to take off his mask; I grabbed my knife harder, feeling the sweat precipitate on the wrapped handle. The worn leather had been grooved in, it was giving and smooth from use.

"Am I? " he said, letting the tip of the hood rest on his shoulder, showing his face in the light, that smirk as apparent as his voice made it sound. I'm reasonable, but I knew he was attractive. A mess of dark red-hair, not unlike mine, sat upon his chiseled face, running into his eyes, tucked behind his ears, and his bangs flitting a little in the whistling wind through a floor crack in the pub. His eyes were as crimson as his hair, both of them exhibiting a stained-blood look, as if the field of battle had dipped him into the mess of the side that lost then let him dry out in the sun until the stale blood stained his eyes and hair. His straight chin came to a blunt point, and his neck, thick and sculpted, fell into an overcoat, the collar perked up around the back of his neck. Said collar was blue, laced in a dirtied silver stripe that was probably white when clean, but hadn't been washed in years. Bits of blood, small rips, and slices were apparent on the material, showing frayed ends and marks of abuse.

"So what? What do ya want? Ya got the job, now I want it. Give it to me, and I'll let you live." I wasn't the best at threats, but I needed this job, I really did.

"You've known me for a minute, and you already want what I'm not going to give you. Feisty little bitch, ain't ya? " he smirked, twirling his fingers on the top of the empty mug I had given him. "You want to go outside with me then, miss? " I nodded, standing up, slipping my knife up my sleeve. He stood too, putting his hood on, the light slowly ebbing from his face, lingering in the cracks of his fair complexion before it was all gone. He moved silently, almost perfectly, no stride, but just straight movement. He opened the door to the pub, a raucous yell of the people inside to shut it, for it let a brief snow in with the gusts. He held the door open for me, as I walked out, quickly distancing myself from him. He shut it, kicking a foot-full of dirt and light-snow lining the ground into the cracks of the door, making sure it shut. He chuckled a little, moving down his hood again.

"Lovely weather. . . ever killed anyone in it? The way their blood spills on the snow, absorbs it, and freezes. . . it's beautiful. But, I bet a little one like ya has killed maybe, what, one guy, and now you think you can be a merc? Show me what you have, I'll give you my job. That drunk-ass doesn't remember his hand from his foot, he'll pay anyone. Come at me," he said with more than a little arrogance. He took off his shawl, hanging it on one of the low shingles to the pub, next to the rotting, white wooden sign with the painted letters P-U-B, gathering the light snow. The flakes fell briefly, sifting through the darkness and settling peacefully onto the ground without as much as a whisper of its entrance. Snow was a good mercenary, it was silent, slow, but if you underestimated it, it'd freeze you, crush you, and trick you to falling to your doom.

"So, what's your name, stranger?" he asked comedically, leaning back up with an aloof nature, slow and timidly, his eyes locking onto me. He raised his hands in a supercilious manner, as if to promote me to say it. I only ran forward, sliding the knife out of my sleeve as I punched at his face, grabbing the knife in mid-air to stab him through. He nimbly stepped to the side, grabbing my extended arm, then punched me with his other hand twice in my ribs, making me drop the blade. He was powerful, he was rough, and I fell to the ground, coughing, my knife clanging in the snow. But, I was quick, and was up and got a solid hit on his open jaw. He staggered for a moment, then jumped forward, grabbing me and slamming me to the hard, cold ground, knocking all of the air out of my lungs. He picked the knife up, snickering, wiping the small ice crystals off of it onto his coat. He walked to me, my body convulsing over the lack of air. I managed to look up, scurrying away as quick as I could. He was going to try and kill me, I thought then, this can't be happening. My back came against the pub, and I was cornered, and he stood in front of me, and then leaned down, holding the knife in front of me.

I was terrified. Just because I am used to death doesn't mean I can't be scared of it. My head was flat against the back, and I was trying to force my body to seep through the boards and back into the bar, anywhere safe. He moved the knife back and forth, smirking at my fear and involuntary gasps as he tickled my bare skin with its tip. He enjoyed this, the power, and somehow, my fear...it was palpable, it was pronounced, it was sensual. Finally, he leaned in to stab me, and he did, in my arm-pit. I screamed for a moment before he cupped my mouth with his hand, what little breath I had, reaching to push him away, then, after a moment of scrambling, I felt no pain or blood. He pulled away, smiling, as my hands scoured my body. He was slick, he had stabbed my knife back into my sheath, effectively scaring me enough to death that he needn't attack me.

"Name," he said simply, grabbing his coat up from the P-U-B sign post, slapping the sides for loose snow flakes before tossing it back onto his head.

"Fey. . . Irona," I coughed out, slowly standing.

"If I ever see you again, Ms. Irona, I'll slit your throat and feed your body to the swine of the local butcher," he said monotone, standing up. He went from deadly serious, to jest, back to serious. He walked around the side of the pub, pulling the hood up, and disappearing in-between my haggard, foggy breaths. I fell back into the snow for a moment, eyes shut, hurting. Eventually, I got back up, and went inside the pub. The rest of that night, I don't know, I can't really remember it.

Flashes of drink, dance, and pleasure. I had gone back in, ended up talking to Sir Boies, even dancing with those fools from the Second Laus, more than one Regiment. Somehow, I had gotten Boies to talk, and he had completely forgot about the mercenary who just attacked me, or I attacked, which ever way. I found out exactly what he knew, the job, but I wasn't done that night. It wasn't long before I had found some man, and we were talking, and eventually, we left. The night was a sensual icon of what I had become, something I don't ever understand in myself. When I awoke, I was unsure of my place, but soon realized what I had usually become accustomed to. I collected my clothes from around the room, quickly getting them on. I looked back at the bed, eyeing the man who was still snoring. He wasn't attractive, had a large gut, but he was imposing, intimidating, something I guess I liked. Something...alluring about power, about the seizure and forcible taking of what doesn't belong. Whatever, I had made his night worth it before Lord Eliwood of Pherae would mow him down in battle some week later, I don't care. There was no feeling for him or what had happened, it was purely for the moment, for the night, and for the pleasure. I can kill a man; I can certainly sleep with one.

I was quick to return to my hotel, noticing that the yelling never seemed to stop, even in my absence. I begged the question, in my throbbing head, whether it had gone on all night. Probably. I made my way stealthily up through the inn, trying not to alert the tenants. Considering I didn't even sleep there, it might be rude if I alerted him, since I was just using the inn as a store house. But, I guess it was worth it, since my stuff wasn't touched. I moved to my room, grabbing out my wrought-iron key, slipping it into the lock. I creaked the door open, then shut it behind me, slowly pushing it shut. I don't know why I was trying to be silent, maybe a mercenary thing, but I certainly didn't need to be afraid of being loud, since I was a paying customer to the inn keeper, but I guess I didn't want to let him know I didn't even spend the night in his home, it might be insulting.

The door whispered shut as I turned the knob back into its locked position, breathing out for a moment, not making any noise. My memory served me fine, knowing where the items were. I had to know things like that, as a mercenary, and closed my eyes, sighing, as I took off my sword and laid it on the dresser. It clanged for a brief moment, my steady hand silencing it. I finally opened my eyes, looking at my pale reflection, glazed with dark circles under my eyes and a fuzzy view that soon cleared, much like a man who becomes immediately sober when his wife finds him with another woman.

I turned, grabbing the handle of my sword, ripping it from its sheath off of my dresser, the discarded bandage of the sheath banging on the ground, quickly holding the tip towards my bed. There he sat, that man from last night, smirking. Both of his arms were stretched behind him, leaning against the window-sill, elbows grazing the flowers, smirking with his hood down. The dawn played a low light through his long hair, illuminating it and casting a jagged shadow over his face. His hair was crimson; an alive red that seemed to sway in the light wind from the window, still chilled from the snow last night, but the weather was warming again. His hair seemed to beat, pulsate, with the breaths of wind, like his hair was an extension of his arteries, compared to my rough, rusted hair; his incarnadine head compared to my decayed, claret mess was distinct.

He sighed for a moment, moving forward, as I moved closer. The tip of my blade inched towards him, keeping my eyes fixed on his lackadaisical posture. A single movement was all I needed to attack him, and he shifted. I stabbed forward, lunging with my entire body, but he was quick, quicker than I. He pushed to the side, reaching forward and grabbed my hand on the hilt, pulling the sword into the wall with a dry crack as it punctured the homely paint. I tried retracting my sword, but his gloved hand, rough and powerful, kept my sword in, despite my best efforts to pull back. He smirked, he looked at me and smiled, he liked this. That made me more angry than anything, my inequity...he enjoyed my worthlessness, he took glee in it. I let go of the sword, and swiped his face with a solid hook, which he fell back from, unexpectedly. Grabbing my knife from my side, I pounced forward on top of him, and brought it to his throat. His quick hands caught my body, then tossed me to his side, ripping the blade from its static place in the wall, taking out a chunk of wood with it as it fell to the ground, grumbling in its metallic whine next to my body. I scrambled, grabbing my sword, my knife being ripped from my hand by his.

As I tried to stand and swing at him, he lunged to my gut with his shoulder, knocking my back and the sword falling detestably back to the ground, angry it was being disturbed so. I couldn't breathe, I was clutching my gut, and he leaned over me with my own knife, the second time he had. The dagger was placed next to my throat as he hovered over me, smiling, with a small crag of his lip bleeding. He licked them, looking down at me. I coughed, trying to appear strong, to appear worthy, looking back at him, stifling my coughs, and tears. But, all he could was smirk, smirk that arrogant little curl of his lips. The ends of his long hair, for a mercenary, grazed my cheeks, the vermillion tickling my flustered cheeks. I grunted, leaning up, and spat on his face, falling back down with a grin as he was caught off guard.

He grimaced, lifting the knife and punching my face with his enclosed hand on the hilt, knocking my head into the boards. That one hurt, I remembered, it was a distinct pain, his fist hitting my fresh cut on my face, from the night before. The scab broke, bleeding slightly down my chin, as if I was leaking fire. He rubbed his face off with his bare fore-arm, then brought the knife back to my throat as I cowered in pain, my worthless form being grabbed and held at knife point again. That forearm, barren then, now I remember, it wouldn't remain so, not for the rest of his life.

"I'm not here to kill you, so stop fighting," he muttered angrily. "If I step back, can I trust you won't try and kill me?" I didn't answer, so he sighed, adjusting his position on top of my body, the knife rubbing against my exposed skin. "Seeing as how you're not gonna help me help you, I'll just sit here. Listen, I need someone to help me on this mark. " At the time, I was astounded, as if why would a man like this need help, especially from someone weak and worthless, like I was? I didn't understand.

"This mark is gonna be tough. I can do it alone, collect all the price, but I want a partner. I want someone that I know can handle it and watch my back, and in plus, this one's not for the faint of heart. "

"What dark design do you have to come to me for, bastard?" I seethed, grunting up at him. He smirked again, that tenacious, selfish grin that made me want to curl up into a ball and explode. That aloof nature, the smug grin, the apathetic manner that belied in an inner seriousness, a very mechanical core, it was insulting.

"Did you get the mark out of Boies last night? Y'know, I think ya did. You took my advice, you used yourself, I know. I saw it, and I found out this inn too, if you didn't notice," he stopped to chuckle, then buckled down serious again, pressing harder with the knife on my throat. I felt a little slice, my skin giving a little way, the warm blood dripping down the side. Not deep, but enough to show he was willing to kill me.

"Maybe I didn't, what do you want me to do?" I was giving in, I was complying. My body stopped being so defensive, and went calm, I was looking straight at him, not squirming. I was surrendering.

"You know the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus? The one that dies and comes back, like some batch of Phoenixes, and they're the fist of this country's real defense, right? "

"Who hasn't heard of them?" It was rhetorical, but true. The Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus commanded a degree of respect, from enemy and ally. They were as likely to kill a civilian as they were an enemy. The rumors about them said that they were all large, grizzled men who had little morals, and even less care for their country. They just existed to be elite, and to do what was necessary, although they were constantly undermined due to the stupidity of the Lauan military console, being the "Three Sirs of B". That's what everyone called them, the Three Sirs of B: Sir Bauker, Sir Bernard, and Sir Boies.

"Seems they've finally broke their last tie to this country. They've gone crazy, insane, murderous pigs that have no morals or place. Seems Sir Boies thinks they're as likely to attack and siege Laus as they are Pherae, and he can't have that. It's where we come in, Ms. Irona. We're going to go kill them, but not any one of them, their leader, the man who has this entire rebellion going on. We gotta go give 'em the coup de grace. But, you knew this, I saw you and Sir Boies. I even followed you two to that little inn across the way. . . lucky you didn't bring him here, or my sneaking in would have been a little abrupt. The man may be a pig, but he's a pig with money. Five-hundred gold, a split of his offered thousand, fifty-fifty. I just need you to come with me. " I didn't notice earlier, but it was Boies, this mercenary confirmed it for my groggy mind. Too many drinks the night prior.

I didn't understand at that moment why he came to me, or even why I agreed. I felt like I was back in Bern, being asked to be courted for the first time. I didn't see it like the others did, it wasn't normal or right to me, but I found my niche. And, this, was like a courtship also, a violent, bloody, and combative courtship.

At that moment, the door opened to my room. The inn-keeper, laden in a sleep-less glare of confusion, quickly looked about, finding him straddling my body on the ground. He grunted, closing the door, stomping back downstairs, yelling something inaudible. The mercenary stepped off of me, standing, holding the hilt of my knife out to me, grabbing the blade. I ripped it viciously from his grip, hoping to snare a loose finger, seeing a slight trace of blood exit one of his tips, but he tried not to notice. His wince was involuntary, but he acted as if he couldn't care what I did. He deserved it anyways, and he knew he did.

I stood, grabbing my sword from the ground. I walked over, slid it into the sheath, and tied the loose belt to my waist. I was quick to gather my items, the mercenary watching. Slipping my garments, spread over my bed, and stuffing them into my traveling sack, I needed to know something.

"What's your name?"

"You can just call me Raven."

"Raven? Yeah, sure. Who names their kid after fowl? "

"A mother who hasn't the breath in her lung to answer. Pack up," he said, leaving the room. I finished, looking at my reflection again in the mirror. I wiped my face, looking at the fresh wound, from my cheek to my chin on the left side. It was out of place. I wasn't attractive, I wasn't pretty, but I at least knew it didn't belong. My frazzled, rusty hair fell everywhere; over my eyes, onto my neck, over my ears. It was unkempt and had a single redeeming factor, if you consider unruly immorality worthy. I walked down the steps, finding the inn-keeper readying a pale of soap water to clean the sheets I had. He had an angry look on his face, thinking I had slept with someone in his home. He was wrong, but I wouldn't open my mouth disprove him. I just left, his eyes tracing me out.

The weather had warmed up, lively again, from its biting, drifting snow last night. The clumps left of the light snow were being swept into clumps in front of every house, and most of it was turning to slush under the imprinted feet on its surface. Raven was standing on the side of the inn as I walked out, pushing off and joining me as we ambulated through the grass-town of Laus. Eventually, we came to the large draw-bridge leading out, the worn and tired Ninth Regiment kids quickly perking up to open it, after getting authority from the archers looking at the horizons. They whined, grabbing their ropes, slowly lowering it as we walked out. Once we were out, Raven looked at me with a smirk. I was going to kill him in his sleep, I really was. I knew that as soon as he did fall asleep, he was going to die, so I smiled back.

"So, you have any idea where he is?" he asked me. I did, but I wasn't going to tell. I said no. "I got an idea then," he muttered. "You know what happened two days ago, right?" I didn't. "Well, Caelin, you know how Pherae's up-in-arms for that city, well, they sent out the Fourth to attack anything Pherae sends their way. They got into a tussle with one of their hired Pegasus Knights, and basically, lost a few good troops. After that, they went berserk, left Laus, and rumor is...they took a small village as their fortress. Laus isn't going to spend the troops to go take them out, seeing as how they tried that with the Fifth of the Fifth, and well, they didn't answer back. So, I did a little asking, asked real hard, and got an idea. Y'know the far east of Elibe. . . those small villages. They're in one of the worthless cantons of Lycia, but no one gives a rat's ass about them, which is why the Fourth Regiment made it theirs. We go there, we kill their leader, Commander Thiocyan, and we bring his head or our word back, get the pay. I believe what Boies said was 'terminate his command, with extreme prejudice'. "

"Now, what's the catch?" I asked.

"No catch, just gotta get there."

"The catch of you needing me. You're good enough to make it on your own, to go out there, kill him, get out. Don't tell me a merc' like you is scared of the Fourth. "

"Scared? Hardly. I need your help because it may get rough. Double my chances if I have to get into it with more than just Thiocyan, and you distract them. What's so bad about that? "

"You're hiding something, Raven. I don't need to know you long to know your lies," I said vehemently, nursing my jaw still. He had a solid strength, like how you'd expect a boulder, carved into a statue, to punch. The un-carved boulder...that would be Thiocyan. Or, maybe not, maybe he was carved, and Raven the un-carved. The level of right and wrong is gone, the mask of civilization and the ideology of morality, ha, gone, but I had it then, I still believed there might be something going for everyone in the end of it all.

We started walking east of Laus. It wasn't eventful, just a walk. Halfway through, I realized neither of us packed any food, but I kept it to myself. I had gone three days before without eating, and I could again, but it didn't mean my rumbling stomach liked it. We also didn't look for food, which meant we'd be sleeping hungry. At dawn, I'd search for something to eat; there are always animals up at dawn. He wouldn't care though, he'd be dead. I would slit his throat in the night, and leave him there, dead, for the vultures. He deserved nothing more.

The only real thing I could remember as we walked was the cold. He was leading, and I was following. Where ever he thought we should go, whatever village that Thiocyan had overtaken, he knew where it was, and I was following. My head was kept down, trying to get out of the wind, and all I could see were the back of his boots, trudging on. The weather was something fierce, something left over from the day before. The light snow wasn't exactly big, but it carried with it a murderous wrath, like a cornered dog. The wind was cold, laced with ice and would latch on, bite in with icy teeth, to the open skin, stinging down to the bone. It hurt, it didn't let my mind wander, it was constant. Within three hours of our departure from Laus, I was wrapped, head to toe, save for a slit for my eyes. The wind wasn't just carried by one desolate gale, but an entire torrent of these arctic winds, blowing down from the Bernese Mountains. It would be warmer the next day, as shown by the cloudless sky. Cold like that was brief.

Eventually, we found a campsite. He noted we had no food, but I didn't respond. We started a fire; I found brush and he made the fire. His rough hands worked the stick into the dry dirt until, eventually, a flame was spat out. Raven sat back, watching it grow, snatch the bystander twigs and dry leaves, then bloom into a full flame, blossoming with all of its fiery might. The arrogant mercenary smiled, looking at his work. I couldn't help but just glare at him, that smugness, that confidence he had in being able to start that fire, smirking at its warmth. We had both set up our tents on opposite sides of the fire, as far apart as possible, lying in front of the open flaps. He looked at me through the gaping mouth of the contorting fire, the small embers ascending in pearly little spheres, dying out into the dark night where the smoke blended with the sky.

"So, what did you plan tonight?" he whispered, smiling the entire sentence through. I put on my best confused face. "Oh, come on. I know what you're thinking. What was it? Gonna tie me up and leave me? How about drop a boulder on my head in the middle of the night? Stab me through? What did your little mind come up with, Ms. Irona?" I just looked at him, smiling, the mouth of the fire laughing as it whipped in the wind to let our gazes meet. "Smile that smile, girl...the one with the foul breath behind the perfume, and the sharp knife behind the soft curves. You think your kind is new to me? "

"Then why bring me along? If you think I'm just going to slit your throat. . . "

"So, my throat, eh? I never liked it anyways," he commented. I screwed up, I made an error in speech, he knew my plan. I spat away, something he picked up on. My actions weren't so mechanical, so perfect as to be without flaw, and I was not without control. I find myself incapable, right or wrong, to control myself at times. Be it the curse of true emotion, unable to truly control what I want to do, but that motion, that spitting to the side of disgust, disappointment, he knew he was right, he knew he had won, won some valuable prize. He had beaten me again, and somehow, I told him he had won, I had given him that satisfaction. I let him be stronger.

"Why did you want me to come with you?" I asked, direct and without remorse. I was launching a verbal arrow, one that was swift, sharp, and accurate, straight to his arrogant heart.

"You don't want the money? Leave," he responded without much of sympathy.

"I want all the money, I want the job, you get outta here," I spat back. I wanted to reach to the fire, grab a handful of the inferno, and stuff it down his throat, holding his mouth shut until every inch of his body scorched to match his black heart, the superiority drove me insane. I couldn't stand him, but I kept myself, I tried to make myself calm, calculating. But, that's never so easy when you're fated to have no sense of right or wrong.

Or, not so much a lack of sense, but a wrong one. What map leads you West instead of North is as much a lie as the foolish apparitions of a proud man who kills for a country that wants him as dead as those he slays. What bearing have I on right or wrong, I know not. Perhaps I knew which I had, I had reasons, but now, I can see they were all lies. They were as fallacious as those which I held to as stead-fast as the rules of Saint Elimine. Perhaps my belief, my very core that required a reason, a morality, to keep going was itself flawed. My existence was flawed, my entire drive of right and wrong...what I judged and justified my life by: wrong. I know that now, but then, it was as clear as his shrouded, mysterious face is. Accuracy is as impossible as knowing anything for certain.

"I can't do that. However, I will do that on one condition. Why are you worthy of this job and not me? "

"Because I went to him first."

"And got nothing from Boies. By that logic, I am the only one worthy of this mark, Ms. Irona, but that's a lie. I can read you like I can any other lady who swings me for a night," he said with a rough eloquence. He was so pompous, so smug, so egotistical, and so...right. He quieted me with a finger, noticing something move. I didn't, but after a quick lunge and a downward snap of his hand, he clenched a small plains rabbit in his hands. He smirked, holding it to me, then strengthened his grip and snapped the neck. Within an hour, we were each eating its meat, the hide sitting out in a small bath of water as Raven ran it with a blunt stick he found.

"I'm a mercenary, a murderer for money, I don't need logic. I need coin and the blood on my blade to earn my pay. You're screwing with the plan," I said belatedly.

"I could have killed you, twice. You're alive, and here, with me. So, be grateful. Eat up."

"And I was going to kill you tonight. Shame to do that to someone so 'nice' as you."

"Not very nice, but you couldn't. I wouldn't let you, and we've established that you can't even beat me," he motioned with a leg of the hare, half-torn of skin, waving the cooked meat around like a superimposed authority as he spoke, pointing and jabbing in the air.

"Why then, why am I here?" I whispered after a minute.

"Reasons," he blurted out with as much force as my aching cheek had known of his fist back in the inn. He didn't look up, but ripped back into the rabbit's meat, ripping the flesh from the bone with a carnivorous appetite and ferocity.

"Reasons, huh?" I had the offensive, I had his guard down, and I had him without a real grip on the situation. He always seemed to have that…that little bit of control, knowing what to do, where and when--security. Raven faltered, he looked up questioningly, throwing the bone into the darkness and looking at me with an inquiring set of eyes, and I would capitalize. "What reasons? What justifies your actions? What reasons have you for bringing me along with you? "

"What justifies yours?" he countered. I don't know why I answered him, considering he dodged my question, but I did. I am impulsive, I am not perfect, and damn it, do I wish I could change some things I did. I wish I could switch my wrongs to rights, and my rights to wrongs, I wish that my life was easier to dictate over some plan and over-arcing methodology, but I am incapable. Incapable, weak, inferior, accepting, worthless.

"What justifies me? What justifies what? My life? My life is justified more than any action of yours!"

"By what? Belief? Morality? "

"By the fact that I know what I do, I do with just cause and right on my side."

"Right on your side? Killing people, that's right? " I had little answer. He stood up, towering over the fire with a demonic image flashing around his edges, his rough face and jagged hair, lighting up the craters where his eyes sat before he started walking around. A small trail of blood ran from his lip, the under-cooked meat still juicy and lingering between his teeth. Raven loomed over me, looking down, and then sat. I moved my hand to snag my dagger from my tent, sliding it along the dirt, hiding it under me. I traced him as he walked until he sat down with as much effort as it took for a dead body to fall down to its grave. He sighed, reaching over to his shoulder, loosening the strap holding on his domed armor, letting the plate rest in the rag-weeds for a moment, and then looked over to me, straight in the eyes. "You've as much justification for your actions as a dog for putting its tail between its legs."

I couldn't take him; I couldn't stand the breath he took, the very scent of his sweat and dirtied hair, the lingering spice of grog on his tongue and the smug flash in his eyes. I lunged, my knife held downwards, trying to rip through his skull. Dig deep, right through his brain, through his heart, his soul, let him bleed to death on this plain, let his life ebb from him and escape out. Die, you arrogant fool, die. He grabbed my wrist in mid-air, smiling. His grip was rough, his calloused hand on my knobby skin, and he twisted. It hurt, I gasped, I let go of the knife, and he pushed me to the ground, hovering over me, pinning me down. His deep breath blasted my face with its pungent aroma, a sickening, crawling, disgusting, vile abomination that I contorted from. His head leaned down, and he licked me, along my cheek and up to my eye, then moved back, savoring the, what I imagine, salty taste of my sweat.

"Do you even know what justifies a person, an action? What do you think is it that makes something right, justified, worthy? Belief? I'll tell you mine, I'll show you mine. You don't know what to even think is right...you don't know right. You're lost in oblivion...let me show you what can is right, what is wrong. I'll give you justification." He showed me something I didn't think I could ever know. I won't claim that he enlightened me, no, that's something I can't describe who did or who can, maybe even the man I stand above now, but I can't deny what he did, it was important. It showed me something, it showed me that there's nothing that isn't possible: right or wrong. He was right, he thought, I thought so too; I can't ever know what was right now. I thought I found justification that night, only to find none existed a day later.

He leaned down and kissed me, pushing his tongue into my mouth. I tried resisting, using my teeth, and when I did, he punched me. I coughed, unable to breathe, looking at him through glazed eyes. He overpowered me, taking my grasp, away from me. My hands contorted, grasping into his flesh with whatever nails I could muster. I tried biting him, but he'd just hit me harder. He liked it, he enjoyed it, and all he could keep repeating in my ear was "this is justification".

This is justification.

He raped me, taking away my very being. My self, my sense of self, removed. I couldn't fight back, I was used, my very body, my flesh and my soul, my morality, used. He thought he gave me justification. At some point in the night, I stopped fighting back, I stopped grunting and yelling, screaming, trying to attack him, and just stopped. I gave up. Tears rolled down like the waterfalls of Bern, rolling through the sharp rocks like a discarded child. I stopped whining, I just accepted, I let him. My body leapt with each thrust, and I couldn't help it, I couldn't help myself. I gave up, I gave in.

He ripped my belt off, forcing my body down with his knee. I scratched with my free hand before he pinned me down, rummaging with his hand. I screamed until my lungs went hoarse, I fought back with every muscle, I bit and squealed. He left most of my clothes on, just pulled around enough. He pushed me to the ground, running my face along the dirt through the weeds until I stopped squirming.

Was he wrong? Yes. Was he right? Yes. I don't know, I can't define it, I can't think. I can't even imagine what happened, why it happened, and try to clarify it as right or wrong. I remember, at one point, he leaned over me, grabbing a fist-full of my clothing, and yanking my head up, putting his lips next to my ear, whispering as he kept going.

"Am I wrong for doing this? Yes, I am. I'm showing you what is wrong, you'll learn, and you'll even be so much grateful for me showing this to you, showing you this horror. Oh, the horror...can you fathom it? But, what am I doing wrong?" I grunted, I whined, I made any feral noise I could in my choked throat. I was parched, I was unable to speak, my energy gone, and my crying turned to a muffled whimper as my head was thrown back into the dirt, lacing my teeth and lips with withered roots. I coughed, unable to speak, whining out some unearthly sound of worthless purpose. He leaned down again, continuing, whispering his malicious tone. "I'm wrong, I am doing evil, I am evil. What do I do, by what morality? Saint Elimine's, of course. Society's, possibly. I am ravaging you, ravaging...I do evil, I do wrong upon you...how do you feel for it? Do you feel the victim of an act of pure wrong? Tell me," he said, kissing my neck, nibbling with his teeth. "Tell me if I do evil."

I couldn't respond to him. Had I the energy, the will, the breath, I would tell him he was pure evil, he was wrong, he was entirely doing something bad, evil, atrocious, baneful, wicked, sinful...but was I equal in sin for giving up? For indulging? I was raped, I was used as an object for forced lust, I was powerless, and yet…am I wrong? I don't know, I still don't know, I can only think that there is no right or wrong. Now, I know there's action and inaction; that is all. Then, though, then I could look at myself, and say that I am doing something wrong, a manipulator of obscene action. Saint Elimine, what have I done so wrong, how have I come to here, I thought. Oh, how I thought it.

I guided my life by principles. Principles that were as vivid, realistic, and controlled as those of a scribe, as the practiced tunes of a lyre in the courts of royalty, praising long-dead warriors and forbidden love. I knew what was right, what was wrong, and somehow, I couldn't ever describe the action, what I did as being either. It's because, now, I see that neither of my actions fell into these vague, capricious ideals that didn't even exist.

Morning came, and I hadn't even slept. I spent the night looking off into the distance, my head laid flat onto the dirt, my lips crusted with the filth of the ground, and my body left a mess. My hair must have been more like that of a sea serpent than a flaxen beauty, my face pale like the drained bodies of the dead on a battlefield, and my mind, my soul...no. I couldn't move, not even an inch, I felt like I wanted to die, but I breathed shallow, infrequent breaths that were more a product of habit than force. My eyes didn't blink, the image scorched into my head, I couldn't move. I grew cold, the fire died from its howling beast form to a whimpering dog in the embers, crackling with its dreaming barks and twitches.

Raven woke, sprawled out and yawning. He looked to the young sun, smiling back with his large grin, then stood up, walking to go urinate. He returned, getting his clothes on. I traced his movements, the distinct sounds, without moving, without looking. I couldn't, not at that moment, I was incapable. He leaned down in front of me, putting his head close to the ground to look me in the eyes, then smiled.

"We're heading out. Tomorrow, we should arrive at the town that Thiocyan is in. It's called Chlonir, after the guy who founded it some centuries ago. Never been above a hundred people, so no one cared. Get up, we're going." I didn't move, so he grabbed me and pulled me up, standing me up straight. He had both hands on my shoulders, balancing me, looking me up and down. My trousers were still unbuckled, hanging lightly from my knees. I didn't care, I was going to fall when he let me go anyways, I wasn't even there. I can look back at my actions, but as they happened, I couldn't do anything, I couldn't even think, I was broken. He went to a knee, pulling them up, and then buckled them, adjusting my clothes. He packed the other tent, then put the bag on my back, and gave me a swig of his flask to knock me out of my trance. It worked.

We started walking, slowly. Where he wouldn't slow for anything the day prior, he walked slowly for my sake. My feet dragged, my eyes held straight on the ground, my rusty hair blinding me to everything in front of me. Half-way through the day, he said we could stop, and we did. The scenery was slightly changing. Behind me were the disjointed, un-watered, and barren plains, laden with a bush here and there, and an innumerable amount of sharp blades of grass, pricking the foot of those without thick soles. The dirt would crumble in your hand and bruise your face, rough and coarse. It was unforgiving, and anything that wanted to happen there was equally as subjective to the things that happen on its scabrous surface.

I fell to my knees when we stopped, my eyes trained on the horizon, unable to speak or say anything. He looked down at me, his sword swiveling on his hip as he did. He took it out, sliding the edge with a light and distinctive slicking-noise until it finally exited, and he walked forward. I didn't train my eyes on him, but I saw him walk by. I didn't care, I couldn't think, I couldn't even comprehend. Words flew threw my head, not thoughts, not sentences. Emotions, feelings, not any sort of stupid ideology or theology. Morality be damned, I wasn't able to even think. He stuck the sword in the ground in front of me, leaning down, putting his weight on the weapon-turned-cane.

"I am sorry for what I did," he whispered, leaning close. His face pushed aside a loose clump of hair, embracing his cheek as it morphed to the intrusion. I didn't move as he drew closer, nearly breathing off of my flesh, putting his lips to my ear. "Do you wish to kill me now? For what I have done? Have I done something worthy of killing now?" He stepped back, leaving his sword in the dirt. I stood hazardously, almost falling, watching his eyes trace me the entire way. Half of my view was frayed layers of orangey-red hair, but it didn't stop me. I grabbed his sword, ripping it with both hands from the ground, ripping up root and stalk of the offensive thorns, then leapt at him. He didn't flinch, but it took both of my hands to raise that sword, bring it above my head, and I got in front of him.

I was breathing hard, seething, my chest rising and falling with such vehemence I couldn't even control. It was so full, my mind so uncontrollably convinced he was doing wrong, that he wasn't worthy of that breath in his lungs, that I brought the sword down. My body throbbed, each beat of my heart expanding my will, my body, the cut on my face alive and shining. However, it was heavy, too heavy for me. I swung it wildly, and it flew from my grasp, clanging in the dirt. I was thrown off for a moment, and then I was crying, uncontrollable. I was weak, I am weak, so worthless, I couldn't even kill him, and he didn't move! Why couldn't I just lift it and do it, I couldn't. Then, he leaned down to my crumpled form, grabbing my chin in his hand looking straight into his blood-red eyes.

"Killing me wouldn't solve anything. To do what is truly right in this world, you must do it so that the heavens and the earth shake with your act, so that every single person in every nation may know this change meant something, for better or for worse. Killing one man, raping one woman, does nothing; real right and veracious wrong exist only to those willing to shake the foundations of what we know. Would you be able to do that?" Raven turned and walked back, grabbing his sack, then his sword from the ground. He wiped the dirtied end on his sleeve, and then put it back into his sheath. "Let's go," he whispered, and we left about a minute later. I had to be stronger, to shake those foundations, those pillars of which I know to be right or wrong, or, what I knew.

We walked along, this time more briskly. I was awakening again, gaining more strength, coming back to my senses. I felt that I should feel impure, I should feel like I sinned, that I am unworthy, but I couldn't. I found that I needed to be stronger, so that whenever I have to chose between right or wrong, I can chose, I do whatever is necessary to go on the course of right, to do what I know, morally, to be right. I found myself walking faster, breathing harder, catching up to Raven, and making him quicken his pace. I was jogging, I was running, I was sprinting, just running as hard as I can, until my lungs burned and my knees collapsed from exhaustion. Then, I got up, weaving in and out of balance, and started running again until I fell. I wouldn't stop, I couldn't, I needed to grow stronger, be stronger, be able to chose, be able to continue. I needed an answer, I needed truth, I needed strength. I found that strength in grabbing a clod of dirt, wrapping my fingers in-between the worms and roots, pulling myself up again, and staggering, then running until I fell again. And, I kept going, running blind into what direction I didn't know, just running, sprinting, until my body refused to stand.

I fought, my breath like that of a dragon, my eyes scorched, my hair a dancing lantern, my body a cauldron. My hands whipped the blazing, writhing pain, ripping through the ground with dirty fingernails and blackened hands, my face layered in mud and grime. I became that inferno, the one that we all fear, and I wouldn't stop, I needed to be stronger, to continue. I breathed out fairies of embers, twinkling in the dusk, I saw the burning horizon, and I pulled myself further through the flame. Finally, I gave out, smoldered, Raven walking next to me. I saw his boot, my lazy eyes feebly moving up to see him, my hoarse breath erratic and painful as he leaned down to me, cupping my face in his rough glove.

"We're resting here. I'll go get water and food. Rest up, Irona, we have a Commander to kill tomorrow," he said, dropping his sack next to me. I don't know how long passed. My nose was buried in the sandy dirt, breathing in the soil, filling my lungs with its darkness. I wanted to fill my lungs, my veins, my heart, full of this darkness, this blinding and impossibly deep shadow I had when I closed my weary eyes. At that moment, the sky was red, dyed red with the spanning light of a single flare, tinting the mountains in an incarnadine glow. I was face first in the ground; the darkness spread out to infinite, lying motionless, unable to breathe or think, too tired, trying to get strong, to beat anything that would even try to question me, to try and do wrong unto me, or wrong at all.

I awoke to a drowning sensation. Raven was standing over me, his flask dribbling water into my mouth, tinged with the lingering taste of a bitter brew. I coughed, waking, the sky now dark. I gulped, spitting it out, and he poured again. Eventually, I started drinking it until I grabbed it myself, and finished. He walked off, sitting down in front of a bundle of sticks, all leaning on a single, rotten log. The water scorched, removing all the pebbles and grit from my throat, running down to my stomach. My coarse throat was run over, every little rough spot cleansed, rubbed raw and smooth, and my mouth turned from the sharp and rugged plateau set in a wasteland into something resembling a tongue in a mouth.

I set down the emptied flask, wiping my mouth, feeling strands of water leak their way down my body from my haggard, chapped, and ruptured lips. They hurt to move, breaking some of the calcified strength they had, the bitter taste of blood snaking its way into my mouth. I watched him work in the darkness. I couldn't notice anything, not a single rock or form; it was like a tenebrous void. I could only make out Raven's nebulous form through the use of inference, using sound and what little light was left in the ray-less heavens. He was sparking a flint, and finally, caught some ragweed on fire, consuming the rest of the fuel. His form was illuminated with the orange luminosity, him standing. He was proud, but not quite as arrogant as he was last night, not so willing, not so much pompous. He was more factual, more level. He was happy he started it, but wasn't vain and smug. It was a distinct difference. He disappeared from the small light, returning in a moment, dragging the carcass of a beast.

"It's a cougar," he whispered, unsheathing a small knife, rubbing it lightly on a rock jutting from the ground, then stabbing it into the hide of the animal. "It was sneaking up on you, it smelled the blood. I caught it in time, and ended up killing it. I think you might want this," he said, tossing over the head of the animal. It rolled to a stop in front of me, lightly grazing the flask. The face was contorted in a growl, but sliced clean at the neck. As Raven moved to put the body over the top of the fire, using his own weapon to spear the meat through, I saw the neck, ripped through, the bloody mess of muscle fibers, tendons, ligaments, and bone, jutting out in a rough and brutal edifice of its last moments.

"It was creeping on you, then I saw it, started yelling and running, so it turned to look at me. It thought about it, y'know," he said, turning the blood-stained knife at me, as if to accuse before stabbing it back into the beast to flay the skin from its body. "It came at me, missed with a leap, then I took its head right off with a quick slice of my sword. He didn't feel a thing, but it bled like crazy. And, kept twitching as I carried it back by its hind paw. You know, those teeth could make a nice gift, if you want." I didn't respond, only watched. I wanted more water, my throat itched again, but I didn't say anything. I listened to the crackle of the fire, the meat being turned every few minutes by Raven's strong form, lifting the sword up, body speared through on its blade, then setting it down on the other side. Drops of blood fell to the fire, hissing with a searing delight.

"Here," he said, handing me a plate full of the meat. In a minute, he returned with his flask, full of water again. I slowly grabbed the pieces of stringy meat, putting them in my haggard mouth, looking off, not able to speak, still lying on my side. "Use a fork," he said compassionately, putting one into my weak hand, forcing my fingers to hold it correctly. "Eat, you need it. You took a bad fall on that little run of yours." I didn't know what he meant, but I soon found out. I know why I fell, why I couldn't stand, and why the cougar found my scent: I had cut my leg. It seemed some rock had torn through the flesh of the back of my leg, something I didn't feel and didn't notice on my sprint. But, I kicked my leg, and it didn't hurt. It burned, but not the feeling of a wound. He was crouched next to me, watching with crimson eyes set upon a youthful, but entirely cement, face. I lifted the edge of my pants, rolling them up, looking at my calf. It had been sewed up with a rough utensil, no work of a nun at the monasteries of Saint Elimine, but it looked to be done right. I looked over at Raven, but he turned away, standing, cutting another piece of meat for me, handing me the plate. I then noticed I was using his plate, since I didn't have one, and he wasn't eating. I didn't understand why he was being nice, or even what he was doing for me, but I thanked him silently.

I don't know if he deserved the thanks, not for what he had done. But, was he right in that? Or, was he wrong? Was this foolish to try and make up for what he did? Or, perhaps, it was planned. Show the good, show the bad, make a decision. I can't decide, I don't know, and even now, I can't decide what good and bad are. I think that they don't even exist, and looking back upon Raven's foolish action, I see them only as things, simply movements, not acts of compassion or rampaging lust. I don't know, I just can't decide, I don't even know what I need, or what I want. It would be easier if I knew, if I could just have someone there, to tell me, to whisper "this is right", to be the one who can lead me to whatever end it is that I just go to, without falter or folly. But, I can't, I just can't.

I finished eating, and then he used my plate and got some of the cougar for himself. He ate it silently, offering me as much as I could possibly want. After the fire died and the meat had cooked through, he set up both of our tents. I sat, watching him, like a child. My head swiveled with his body, lit disproportionately by the dim fire. The flame he lit this night wasn't a passionate and infuriating blaze, but a humble, small fire that burned what it had and nothing more, not reaching out to the other shreds of flora, like a prey smiling as it slept next to its warm predator. Something was...off, something wasn't combative, but accepting. The fire popped with courtesy, not ambivalence.

Raven finally sat down next to me, after everything was set up, finishing off his last piece of meat, eating silently, without any barbaric inclinations. He finished, putting his plate back into his sack, then looked at me. I couldn't help but look at him.

"Do you like the night? I do," he said, leaning back, looking at the sky. "If you wait, the stars will come out, and you can see a thousand little eyes looking down on you, smiling." He looked at me, both hands clasped behind his head. I was sitting flat, looking at his out-stretched form on the plains. "Those stars, they're the true justification. They look down on everything, and they see everything, no matter what. We can't hide anything we do from them, and they will truly tell us the right and the wrong. They look without bias, without a single inkling of care for what happens: only observing. And, when it comes time for us to join them, they converse, merit everything we've done that they have seen, and value our good and our evil. Beyond what might be right and wrong, they see it all. That's the true justifier, no eternal or moral judge for any of us to have. They're it. "

"Those are the justified ones?" I asked in a clammy voice.

"They have to be. Can you think of any other one? "

"No," I whispered dejectedly. We sat in silence for a moment before I decided to lean back, put my back to the ground, and look to the stars. We sat speechless until the darkness veiled, ripping back its sheath on the beautiful, sparkling night. Each one of them was a life, a special moment, an entity. One soldier from one regiment, twinkling down, judging the others. They were justified, I thought. I was as impressionable as anyone else, and still am, and can't make up my mind. Was Raven right, or was I right? Would I learn the right when I got to my mark, to Thiocyan? I can't decide. I finally had to break the silence. "And, what justification did you have for last night? "

"I wanted to show you what little justification one can have in simply thinking they have it."

"By using me, my body." I couldn't get angry, I hadn't the energy or drive, I just wanted to know. He had taken from me what I should only be able to give; I had nothing left to do to him.

"I let you try to kill me, and you still might be able to, if you wish."

"I don't want to."

"Why?"

"I don't have any justification."

"Do you ever find justification? "

"I did. I did. "

"Then how did you lead your life the way you did? How you do now? "

"By hoping that no one can judge me." I don't know how or why I was saying what I was doing, but it was true. Somehow, this had shown me the truth, truth of myself, truth of what needed to be said. I couldn't indulge, get angry, act impulsively, I had no reason, no justification. I had been removed of it, and then, I was able to look at what my justification was.

"Well, there's always a judge. Always. Someone, somewhere, somehow, action cannot go ignored. There are reasons why killing someone is considered a crime, and something we both specialize at. There's a reason why rape, to us both, was considered something vile. Do you not realize this? There must be justification, there must be reason, there must be definition. It is impossible to not realize it. "

"I lived without the realization of why or how, only continuing to hope that my action fell into the region of right." I turned to look at him. "Thank you." I looked back at the stars. "Why did you want me to come with you on this mark?" I said more than asked.

"You remind me of my sister. By bringing you, I felt maybe I could be closer to her again."

"Would you rape her too?"

"No, I wouldn't. But, I at least felt closer to her by being with you. Does that justify that? "

"Hardly. I want to know more."

"More? What do I owe you to know? " I looked at him, through that fiery red hair, lying discarded over his face and into his blood-red eyes, and he sighed, continuing. "My sister...I haven't seen her in fourteen years. We were separated when I was eight; she was five at the time. Priscilla...I think of her nightly. For all I know, she's dead, like the rest of them."

"So, you found justification in bringing me, simply because I reminded you of her."

"It's...a terrible reason, but it's true. You're still getting half of the bounty, though."

"What happened to your family, 'the rest of them'?"

"Nothing."

"Tell me."

"It's complicated."

"I'm listening."

"I used to be aristocracy. Hard to believe, huh? A piece of shit like me, one of those people who dress in suits and have enough money to have butlers, estates, and gardens. Not in this world, not this one we've made for ourselves. That world's behind me, now I know this rough dirt, these dirty acts, and this filth off of my skill at killing, worthless as it may be. But, I digress. My family wasn't without its skeletons, and that closet that they were stacked in had a bottomless pit. This pit was debt. You're thinking 'what does a rich family care about a thing like debt? I know of it simply', but let me tell you, it's powerful. To be thought worthless, without money and hiding in debt, the shadow of a family which lived a lavish life that it couldn't afford, it's too hard. They were publicly humiliated for their egregious lies, and that day, it happened. "

"You see, it was one of the normal days. It was going fine. But, we were seized, taken to the central courtyard. They had amassed all the peasants, the ones whose lives are dictated by the details of those they can only dream about. We were next to Saint Elimine to these paupers. We were called for our debts, our lies, laughed at, made martyrs, and before it could get through, what little money my father had in his pocket, he gave it to the butlers that stayed with us. They took me and Priscilla, they made us leave. I got thrown into a carriage and never saw any of them again, arriving in some far-off town. When I heard news, they all flung themselves from the top of my manor, not able to pay back their debt and unable to live with the guilt. My sister, she could be dead. Last I saw her, I was holding her hand, and I was ripped from her as she was taken the opposite direction to another carriage somewhere else. She could be dead, she could be royalty, she could be a mercenary, she could be a whore, but I know that I love her, I love whatever breath she takes or whatever ground she inhabits. Dead or alive, I don't know, but I love her. "

"What I hate the most and what I saw in you, why I had to come to your room at that inn and make you come…was that same justification. That judgment. You had that look in your eye, like you knew what was right, what was wrong, and you thought you knew it by some presumptuous and pre-ordained idiocy. I wanted to seize that from you, show you what can be done when you look at it from another judgment, an omnipresent judgment. You said it yourself, you were running from it. I know what you were running from, I ran from it too. Coming to grips with what you've done, the things you've perpetrated, that's the crime of our judgment. I tried to explain why to myself, a hundred, a thousand times, why my parents, my family, killed themselves. What justification did they have? A stupid perception of worth that was imposed by the other aristocratic families? Why is murder, rape, love...why do they have to be so judged? And, by who? By some rich people in big mansions with their own minor plantations and the royalties of cantons of Lycia? Hardly. "

"You should see, now, that there is no base for what we perceive to be right and wrong. All we can do is act, be judged by some higher power, someone who isn't prey to our stupidity, to our fallacy, to what we think is right or wrong. I know rape is wrong, but I raped you. I raped you. You know you were raped, but even now, do you want to kill me? I wanted to show you, Ms. Irona, I wanted to show you that no bearing, no measure, of right or wrong can ever sustain your beliefs when it comes to truly relying on them. All you can do is react upon what you're given, what you do, and hope that you measure up to someone's right and wrong in the end. Your sins...I see not a single one. I see in you a person, a flawed, human person, not some sinner or some monk. To me, the monks are the fools, the pure sinners who don't even know that what they do is incredibly wrong. This, here, is life, not prayer to Elimine. One man, however, he at least gives me good thought. Lucius, a friend, a monk…but, even he lives on a principle of morals which he can define by some truth."

"Then why even live at all, if we're all going to just decide for ourselves what is right and what is wrong?"

"I...don't know. I admire the man who does know." We looked back up at the stars. Somewhere along the way, I fell asleep, so did he. Thankfully, the weather was fare, and we were able to sleep without our tents. We didn't touch, we didn't do anything, just looked at those stars, lying perpendicular. I would probably kill him if he touched me again, but I didn't hate him for it, no, I didn't. I was confused, I still was.

Everything he said, I thought about it, hard. Looking at those stars, I wondered. Hey, you, the one star that shines brighter for the rest, looking straight at me...what do you think? What do you think of me? Do you like the way I look? How about how I talk? Is it wrong to have been promiscuous, perhaps letting last night happen? Or, is it wrong for me to even be here? Should I hate him? Should I have ever left Bern? How do I know anything? Please, tell me the answer, I need to know something. I needed to. At that point, I was without bearing. My compass was spinning, I had no North. I desperately wanted someone, someone to just grab me and tell me how it was, what the truth was and what the lie was. Were my ways, perceiving a personal right and a personal wrong the way, or was it something divine?

We woke up early, and were off. I packed an ample amount of the meat in my sack before leaving the carcass behind. I didn't care if I was traced, if some hyena would come and take the meat and indulge. Let it, I didn't care. I wasn't some military regiment that needed secrecy; I was just on a mark. We kicked out the embers, took our fill of the meat for the morning, packed up, and were gone. The day dragged, even from the start. The weather wasn't hot, but it wasn't cold either, just sort of stagnant. I didn't know that when I woke, this would be the day I found true meaning, the day I got my bearing. My compass pointed to a false North three days ago, now it spun, and by tonight, it would point North accurately.

I don't remember much of the day. We just walked, stumbling along from the dry, plains, almost desert, into a more fertile land. Trees sprouted up randomly, bushes were again green, the grass soft, and life thrived. Not the predators that howled in the night from hunger, but burrowing creatures that shied away by our presence. The flat land started rolling, gaining momentum the further the geography winded in, leaving us to scale some hills and plateaus of earthy texture. We had found ourselves in, nearly, a jungle, escalating exponentially from the dirt and yellow to intoxicating green. Large trees loomed overhead, their heavy branches sweeping our path with the small flower blossoms, floating lightly in the wind. The grass was welcome, soft, and inviting, prompting me to take off my shoes. I felt my toes squish in the moist terrain, letting the bendable blades sift between my toes, not cut them with their rigidity.

We made it through the growing verdant, dodging low trees and bushes. I remember wriggling my toes in the dirt, feeling small critters greet me with their slimy bodies. It was something I might not have liked, but reaffirming of life, especially from the harsh plains. The dirt wasn't coarse, but soft and fertile. We were soon at the small village that the Fourth Regiment had taken, looking over it. The way up was a larger hill than usual, which Raven and I took cautiously, stepping up hazardously, grabbing on to the bark of ample trees. The atmosphere was thick, literally and metaphorically. The forest setting had made the humidity dense, as if we were on a sea board, and a fog had taken occupancy over the area. It was as if the fog was the glue that held the mystery of this small village together, these trees as barriers, and kept people out. Trees jutted out from the thick fog like that of an assassin lurking in the darkness, ready to strike. I never really could make much out in the fog, but I remember the effects.

Everything was damp and moist. My clothes became weighted down, my armor had precipitated drops of water on it, and my frazzled, dirty hair started to wet and matte against my forehead. The rusty hair looked like streams of red that were leaking from my skull, down my head. I had to keep wiping my face, flicking the gloved hand to remove it of the water. My sword stopped clinking in its sheath, instead sliding effortlessly in the sling. It would rust, it would match my hair, I didn't care. So long as it killed. And, if it broke because of the rust, I'd buy another. I always had a back-up, albeit worn and not nearly as sharp, big, or available, it was in my traveling sack. I tried parting the fog with my hands, as if that would work. I knew it wouldn't, but I was incapable of not doing things which I knew had no effect. It was as if my existence, my action, was a rhetorical question of "why bother? ". The trees hung heavy with the dew, their branches bowing down to our feet. I brushed against a few, taking away more than my share of wetness, the branch thanking me for lightening its load with its ruffled compliment. The feeling was unmistakable, it was lonely. Each step squished the moist dirt, and every step forward was one into uncertainty.

We came to the zenith of the hill, overlooking what we knew to be the village that Thiocyan had taken. It was the only one in the direction, and it was isolated enough to be right. The change in agriculture, the environment, the atmosphere, all of it was just vivid, it was alive, I knew we were getting close. The top of the hill was rough, as I'd expect no less from my trip up to that point. I thrust myself up, grabbing onto the heavy branches of mournful trees, weeping as I pulled on their flexible branches, covered in their precipitation. Raven joined me soon after, standing next to me, overlooking what I saw. He brushed the water from his long, blue overcoat, popping his collar back up, adjusting his fashionably lazy, smug, hanging sword to suit his normal atmosphere of arrogance. But, that arrogance had been removed since that one night, as if it were only one side of a multi-faced die.

The village we saw was called Chlonir, and was just as deserving as the odd name as you could imagine. I can only describe what I saw in what words seem correct to me, since I am not lyricist or poet. Hanging branches from the huge willows lied upon the huts of the houses with an amicable sanguinity. Vines crept their thorns up and around posts, snatching the earth and parting the fog. The grass gave way for earthy, brown patches of dirt, treaded over where a few brave weeds had taken occupancy, only to be trampled under foot and boot. The fog parted graciously, opening for this secluded village. The huts themselves were built of neighboring wood and thatch, slapped with a mud mortar and a natural sort of beauty. The castles of Laus and Bern couldn't compare to the sheer humanity exhibited by a single one of these buildings.

They were all lined in a haphazard circle alignment, all of them centering on a focal point of the village with one way in: in front of us. It was something out of a fairy tale; a secluded village, over-taken by nature and completely serene, hidden in a fog and through a forest. It didn't fit, like the pieces of the puzzle made a larger picture, but when you took out a piece to examine it, it didn't fit with any other piece, so you wonder how this small piece can fit perfectly in the puzzle when no pieces link. That impossibility, the improbability, made this village, this mark, possible. Small people walked among the incredibly surreal picture, a pristine monument of what was possible in a world without the mechanical eye of man's greed.

"How do we do this?" I asked in a muffled whisper, through the scarf I had tied around my face.

"Well, we don't want to be seen, that's first priority. We gotta kill him and get out quick, without an entire regiment noticing us. "

"Sounds like you got a problem then, bud," a third voice interjected. I turned around to find an arrow head looking me in the eyes, a toothy grin smiling at me from behind that bow. Raven went to grab his sword, but was stopped when another soldier laid the tip of his own weapon on his shoulder, kind of like saying "don't try it". The mercenary relaxed, sighing, putting his hands up. He looked at me, those venomous red eyes full of disdain. I couldn't find it in me to return any glare of emotion, just a glance, a look, more like apathy than any single care. I never even reached for my weapon, just looked back at the soldier with the arrow trained on me.

"What do we do, Sir Nitrat? " the soldier asked, roping Raven's hands behind his back while another unbuckled his large sword and took the dagger from his hip.

"Tie 'em up in the center of the town, like all of our friends. Gimme that sword, girlie..." he said, putting the arrow back in the sheath and slipping the bow around his body. Another Knight came up, holding me at tip while he unsheathed my weapon, and tied it to his back by the hilt, letting it clang against his quiver. "Where's your knife?"

"Don't have one."

"Yeah, bullshit. Merc's like you, hell, soldiers like us, we got those. Just in case. Maybe you can meet one of us who knows first hand about a dagger," he said with a smirk, a little chuckle coming from the rest. This archer was the comedic one, the "Sir Nitrat" they had commented on earlier. His hands moved up my legs, patting down, moving up to my chest, feeling around with a gesture and a contorted face that had his partners laugh a little as his semantics. Finally, he reached around, and found it under my arm-pit, reaching through the armor and pulled it out. "A woman can't hide anything from me, I'm like a hound. I sniff, I search, and I find," he whispered, moving his head about my neck, snorting like an animal, licking my neck as he did. The other men laughed with a huge raucous, then he pulled back, smiling, giving the hand gesture for us to get moving. He tied my hands himself, then kicked me forward, nearly falling. He pointed somewhere with my knife in his hand, and we were soon being shoved down the hill, towards the village.

"Hear ye, hear ye, we have ourselves a lowly, worthless, stupid pile of shit merc's coming here to kill us, again! Come now; see the man and the woman who have come to kill every one of us for seeing the truth, the damned truth! Men and women, sons and daughters, witness your enemy, once again!" Nitrat bellowed as he walked behind us, alerting the village below. Heads peeked out of the huts, dirty faces of joyous children, and their parents' withered frame above them looking with just as much of a juvenile shyness. The village seemed to flicker to life, a spreading flame as his words repeated and echoed through the fog.

People came out and stood in front of their houses, grabbing their children, watching us go by like some creature of another world. The small huts produced more people than I could think lived in them, a man leading out four children and two wives, standing out on the porch, then another with a wife and three kids. Soldiers also started appearing, obviously not ready for battle. One walked out of a house, still wet from his bathing and shaving with a dull knife as he watched us go by, another sharpening a sword with a brick of lime, apathetic as we passed, being prodded in the back.

The closer we got, the fog started veiling, lifting to show the secret, this fantasy. It was as if raising a curtain on a stage, letting the audience finally see the play behind the beautiful tapestry that you got to watch while waiting. Once we started getting to the village houses, I saw something that truly stuck with me. Even now, I can look behind me, over the courtyard, and see them, but they were continually brutal, ghastly, and reminiscent for me: heads. Skewered heads. All of them were stuck in a screaming agony, eyes looking upward to the sky, as if to ask Saint Elimine for the passage of life for a moment more, to see family once more, who knows. They all had been sawed off from the neck, and not clean, but a brutal, excruciatingly painful saw. I didn't need to see it happen to know it hurt; I saw the mangled flesh, contorted bone, uneven line of hanging arteries and rotten flesh. They hadn't been lopped off, but carved off.

The grass was tall, unkempt, and my feet only slid on it. As soon as I would try to stop, turn around, push back, I'd get shoved forward, the pricks of the tip of a sword into the small of my back ushering me ahead. My heels collected dirt, as if to be the last trails of my life, my hands roped behind me. The people all started congregating around the center of the village, where we were being led. Then, I saw it. Spears, all stuck into the ground and arced skyward, blackened and charred with the few sets of skeletons lying on their tips and chained around back. A few of the blackened ribs were lying on the ground discarded, the fertile and moist ground giving way to a large black and yellow concentric circle around the unlit pyre.

"Hey Commander, we got company!" Nitrat said, shoving me forward once more with his shoulder as he walked by. The rest of the Knights stopped us, holding us in place in front of that death pit. Nitrat walked forward, jumping into a nondescript building, one of the same wood-and-thatch huts. Some yelling was heard, a bit of ruckus, and I saw two girls run out of the darkened doorway. They couldn't have been older than fifteen, each grabbing up garments of clothes to hide themselves and retreating to one of the other two dozen small houses, the looks of their families as they passed not angry, but rather accepting, as if to urge "quick, go and get clothes on", not "how dare you".

Nitrat exited after a moment, wiping his face, nodding to the Knights. He leaned back against the wall of the hut, waiting outside of the door for their "commander" to come out. I knew it was going to be Thiocyan, it had to be. We sat waiting, anticipating. I couldn't rip my eyes from that infinite void that existed in that door, whatever it held, demons or salvation. I was here for him, whatever this trip meant, but I was here for this man, the man who was about to see me die. We were grabbed, each arm held firm by a Knight, and I finally got my first chance to look at one of them.

They were wearing a little of their Lauan armor, the light blue tint obvious in the bright sun that rained down in spotted glory through the canopy. They were laced in beaded perspiration, both from the fog and sweat. They had on simple shirts, more like rags, only their mails and helmets on. Their bodies were large, hard, muscular, each of them a burly man. I could distinguish scars all over each of them, on the arms, necks, chests, legs. This was truly the Fourth Regiment. Nitrat jumped out of the house, standing outside of the door, looking at us both. I fought a ltitle, trying to stand better, being jabbed, looking at Nitrat, the archer, smiling a toothy grin. He was an average man, slightly larger build than most, about comparable to Raven, only taller. He had a court-jester like appearance; long, stick-like arms, a craned neck, high cheeks, and a large, straight, glimmering smile. His eyes were set deep inside of his eye-sockets, but glistened with their obvious range. He was an archer of the Fourth; he could have shot us dead miles ago.

Finally, he emerged. Commander Thiocyan, commander of the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus. He leaned under the edge of the door, standing up erect after a few steps outside, rubbing his tired face. He stood full, tall, looking at both of us. I couldn't help but be intimidated, scared, allured, by his presence. He was only wearing a pair of pants, still tying the loose straps, tightening them on his waist. Thiocyan took a single step down to us, Nitrat quickly getting behind him as he walked slowly, methodically. He kept eye-contact with us, looking over Raven, then sitting on me. My rusty hair distorted my view, I wanted to see more, to take it all in.

His body was wrapped in scars. Across his chest was a burn-looking mark, as if seared. His abdomen was privy to a series of cuts, their pink, fleshy lines giving it away. His neck had a rip through it, covered in a dented, darker skin-tone. Thiocyan's face was a mess of different skin tones, all separated by scarred lines, like sectioning it off. But, his eyes remained firm, the dark eyes staring at us both. Not only was he big, his chest spreading wide and a mess of muscle and scar, but his presence was felt. The commoners' whispering silenced, the Knights stood at full attention, and the place became deathly quiet.

Finally, Thiocyan stood in front of us both. He looked over Raven at first, leaning down from his massive position to look him in the eyes, smiling as he did. Raven stared back with vehemence, a look of pure disdain. Then, he moved back upright, and approached me, going down on one knee to look me over. He wasn't a giant, but he was tall, had to be in his upper six-foot range. It was unbelievable how imposing he was. His lifeless eyes scanned me up and down, then locked on my eyes. Then, he smirked, spreading his chopped lips, staring at me for a good few moments. He stood, turned to Nitrat, and then spoke. I'll never forget it, his voice. A cross between a growl and a noise you'd expect a boulder to make when rolling down a hill, a guttural and inhuman snarl of a voice.

"Let these pig-shits go, drop 'em," he muttered. The Knights cut out bonds, then instantly let our arms go, standing fully straight up. Thoicyan turned, smirking. "Stay yer weapons, men," he muttered. His back was to us, we could kill him. Raven nodded to me, then jumped, grabbing onto Thiocyan. He expected it, and I didn't have to see him to know he was smiling wide now. Reaching over his shoulder, he grabbed Raven's throat, pulled him over his body and slammed him to the ground. The soldiers looked amongst each other, wishing to help, but not wanting to disobey orders, most of them standing amongst the natives of the village. "Ain't you going to 'tack me, miss?" he growled.

"No," I said back in a shallow whisper. His head craned backwards, the extremely-short black hair on his head even showing scars along the back of his skull. The black eyes looked at me, then he turned to face me. I could hear Raven rolling along the ground, coughing and trying to get breath, to stand, then falling again. Thiocyan approached me, but I didn't flinch, didn't move. I needed to be strong, I needed to be fierce and ready. I had to be justified in what I did, there was no other way.

"Do Uh scare ya, girl? " he leaned down, whispering into my face. His breath was pungent, rotten, like death. "Do ya fear I'll murder ya, I'll splay ya, bi-urn you, tor-chure you, ravage you...do my worst, put your head on a spear and burn the rest of ya like dem?" he said, motioning to the pyre behind me. He surveyed my body, and I kept my eyes straight on him, not moving. I wanted to shiver, to shirk, to hide, but I remained firm. I think I noticed a change in me. I was controlled, reserved, I could now decide what to do and when, I was finally able to control myself, even though it was slight. "Tell me, did you come to kill muh?"

"Yes."

"How did ya plan to it, gal?"

"With a sword."

"Give her a s'ord," he said to a Knight, who nodded and handed me his. Nitrat yelped from behind Thiocyan, who shut up when the mark gave him a hand gesture to do so. I grabbed the sword, holding it firm in my hands. "Go on, can you kill me? I know you can, you're a merc', right? But, if ya kill me, you'll never leave here, you'll be tor-chured till even Saint Elimine has to be merciful and grab yer soul from your flesh, when they, my boys of the F'urth, won't let it leave. Better yet, what's ya name? "

"Fey Irona."

"Ms. Fey Irona...I'll let you kill me, if you can, tonight. Until then...live." I readied the sword in front of him. Thiocyan folded his arms, standing back, waiting. I could hear Raven mumbling something, probably urging me to do it, but I couldn't. Instead, I lowered the sword, seeing him smile, and handed it back to the Knight next to me. "Wise. And, your friend here, well, he can spend his time with my boys." Thiocyan walked over and leaned down over Raven's convulsing form. "Shouldn't 'ave tried to kill me, I would 'ov given you the opportunity later. Take him off." Two Knights grabbed him, and retreated into one of the houses, the sounds of chains following, a small snicker lingering on the damp air. I stood stationary, watching it all. Thiocyan turned back to me, and then spread his arms wide. "Dis is my village, Chlonir. You're welcome, until tonight. Tonight, yuh will have yer chance to kill muh. Stay your pay, merc'--Fey, until then." Thiocyan turned, and then headed back into his hut. The Knights dispersed, leaving me standing alone in the center of the village.

"Come with me," Nitrat said, walking next to me. I watched him take a few steps, not moving. I wasn't sure, I didn't get it, what was going on? Why would a mark act like this? I just couldn't understand these circumstances, how weird it was, how odd it all was. "Are you coming?" Nitrat said, turning. I nodded, following him. I didn't understand any of this. What I knew, from Sir Boies, was that the Fourth Regiment had gone completely insane after some event a few days back, and they needed to be silenced. What I found here was the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus in their glory, with everything as it should be, according to legends. Running off themselves, large, imposing, powerful, and yet, something was off. They were supposed to be brutal, evil, vile men, and yet these villagers lived amongst them, and they weren't being oppressed, but simply were living along with them.

I followed Nitrat, walking somewhere in the village. His lithe, lumbering figure swayed side to side, the quiver jumping on his back and the bow, slung around his body, swiveling with each step. The villagers muttered, some of them going back in, others sitting out on their small porches, watching. They were apathetic, rather used to this. You'd think they'd be humbled, scared, of the Fourth Regiment, but they seemed rather uncaring that they were there. Could it be they were being governed by fear? No, they didn't seem scared of the Fourth, they were friendly. Could it be they were glad to have them, the legendary Regiment? No, they weren't reverent enough. Perhaps they had no clue what they really were, and just were...nice people? They weren't swayed by knowledge I take for granted. Who are the Fourth to them? Nobody. Funny how that term is thrown around so infrequently, as if their civilization was detached from what you or I would think of as normal. But, how abnormal is it to just be nice? I'd find that soon.

Nitrat took me into one of the houses, setting down his weapon in a corner and his quiver, turning and smiling to the owner. A large woman looked up from her fire, waving at Nitrat. She was cooking in a small corner of her house, left open to the outside so that it could air from the smoke, a kettle sitting over the flame, stirring while throwing more ingredients in. Nitrat walked over, leaning over her shoulder, smelling it, then kissed her on the cheek, and sat down on one of the few chairs spread around the room.

"She's the best cook in town, a mother to us all. Everyone's welcome in her town, even you," he said with a little hesitation. "I'm watching you, don't go for no weapons or nothin' else. Thiocyan's a nice guy, been real good to ya, your friend, though, he ain't coming out as slick. But, I don't know what's spinning in his head, but whatever it is, well, we'll see tonight." The lady turned, two bowls in her hand. She handed one to him, then walked to where I was standing, urging me to sit, handing me the bowl with a large, truthful, sincere smile. I thought I was in a dream, a fog-enclosed dream where the mysticisms of fairy tales mixed in the reality of brutality.

"I know what you're thinking," he said, setting his spoon down in his bowl, mid-meal. "You came here to kill us, the Fourth Regiment, and you don't understand. What is this village, what are we doing, how did we get here? It seems they conveniently forgot to remember the circumstances. Do you know why you're here? "

"You've all gone insane, and are a threat to Laus. Your methods are unsound. You're a bad name, now that you've left the control of the Cantons of Laus. They don't need you around to spread rumors or to attack when they go off and fight for Caelin with Pherae. "

"Sure, but why?" I didn't know the answer. "Because we killed the Fifth Regiment of the Fifth Laus? No. I'll show you, finish up." I sat, eating, looking around. I heard a few kids run by outside, laughing, playing, the scratchy voice of an old man following them, scolding them. The large woman went back to her cooking, serving another man who walked in and thanked her for the bowl she handed out graciously. The inside of her house was simple, but humble. Nothing too telling, or out of place, but just enough there to substantiate something, some life, some sense of home. A crackling fire, her cookware, the seats, and her amiable presence. I felt my sense of right and wrong spinning out of control.

I couldn't decide whether I wanted to think any of this was right or wrong. I was still out of alignment at this point, but I was finding it even harder to hone in on what I thought, or what I had to know. This place was being occupied by those who needed to die, and yet...the peace, the tranquility, how could it exist? How could it be this good when it was predestined, by an amount of money, to be destroyed? It's not like I have questioned my motives before, I have. I've killed innocent people before, I'm a mercenary. Sometimes, bad people want good people dead, and I have to do it, but I've justified my actions in the name of good. How could I justify killing the Fourth, killing these people, when they lived like this? I could justify even killing a saint before, because he was helping out refugees of another country. A guy in Pherae had me kill a local saint of the Church of Saint Elimine for trafficking through Caelin exiles, so I said it was right, and I also thought to myself that in the end, I was going to do something good with my money, with my life, that would justify it all. I couldn't justify anything anymore.

We finished, Nitrat hugged the lady, and we were out and walking in the village. He was tightening his quiver over his body, always wanting to be armed. I noticed his eyes scanning, always looking out into the horizon, the edges of the town. It sat in a small divot around the hills, as if cratered in from the rest of the world, deep and buried within what was normal, it sat underneath the shown world, as if it were the subconscious, subliminal life we all could live. It very much was. Eventually, we reached the far side of the village, just out and beyond the huts and into the start of the forest again, into the wet fog and chirping infinite.

"See these?" Nitrat said, sweeping his hand across the ground. "Six members of the Fourth, dead, pal. Five days ago, we were attacked on a patrol mission. Go on, sit, friend." He did as well, sitting on one of the cut stumps that had supplied the wood for a nearby shack of the village. He took out one arrow at a time, looking them down, licking the feathers and examining them, sharpening the heads where necessary with a flint he produced from his pocket. "Two to your left, that grave, you know who lies there? One of the best, close friend of mine, Sir Vinadium. "

"What happened?" I knew, but I needed to hear it, to justify these bodies under me. Each had a small object stabbed into the ground behind each grave, to tell Elimine "a body lie here", the fresh, brown dirt contrasting from the overgrown green, but small buds of plants were already sprouting through.

"You know...five days ago, we were out on what was supposed to be routine crap, y'know? Sir Boies sent us on another of those dumb patrol missions, friend, just to kill us. He has wanted us dead for years, since we spat in his face with the dumb orders to kill an innocent town, pal, not unlike this one. Since, he's been trying to throw us into the jaw of death, let us die, get us killed. That one, that mission, five days ago, was no different...and we almost did, we came so close. We lost a good few men, and that one, Sir Vinadium, he really shouldn't have gone. We were out, patrolling in front of Caelin, a few miles out. No big deal, right? Well, the Pheraeans, those bastards, were using hired work, some merc's, your kind, but not any, oh no...some Pegasus Knight, and that bitch, she rode in, scoped us out, and we knew we couldn't let it leave, friend. If it did, it'd alert the enemy, and they'd know where we were, no surprise, yadda yadda, so we had to kill it, ya understand? We had to. We couldn't, we didn't have the might, the strength..."

"The enemy killed six of us, man. He, there, Sir Vinadium, she stood over him before she killed him, beating him to a pulp. Broke arms, stabbed shoulder through, collapsed his neck, but this girl, this demon, she couldn't stop, oh no…and we're monsters, we're the damn barbarians. We're the ones who are the Fourth, no, she stood above him, he was dying, and she put the tip of that sword, the one buried in the grave with him, pal, and she kicked it through his neck, stabbing it straight to the ground and pinning his neck up into the air, breathing steel, y'know. He was a friend of mine, a true one...to the end. I remember, those last moments, he fell, and he reached out to me, reached. His fingers twitched, he couldn't move, arm was busted up bad, but he looked, as if to say 'save me, brother!', but I reached back, and my quiver was empty. Empty. Do you know what it is like, do ya, to know you could have saved someone, someone dear, only to find you are incapable, you can't do anything but watch, your quiver, your life, is empty? "

"It's weird, pal. It's out there, pal. It's something you can't describe, something you can't feel, but it's there, y'know, it's there. He had a wife, a kid, a beautiful little girl, she'll never see him smile now, never hold him. He's dead, dead, dead, all for what? I don't even know what, what justification his death had, any of their deaths. It's crazy, it's out there, I don't know, gone, out there. The eternal question of why, I don't even know. I wanted that girl on the Pegasus, I talked to him, I talked to Sir Vinadium, I told him if we found one, we'd catch her, sell the horse, I'd take the girl and make her my little secret, so cold and so sweet, just to say, and we'd split the money for the Pegasus, buy our own little Canton, make an empire. Maybe that was too high, but we'd be well off, we could retire, we could do anything, but no, friend, no, pal, it couldn't, it didn't happen. "

He was teary eyed; he wasn't able to speak more. Instead, he reached into his pocket, grabbing out a pipe. Knocking around a small tube, he laced it with whatever herb, and then proceeded to light it with his flint he used to sharpen his arrows. His eyes closed, the moistness being wiped by a free hand, and took a long drag off of the pipe, letting the purple poison escape his nostrils in a languid, slow way. He then looked over to me, smiling, changed in demeanor, calmed. The audible clack of his teeth unclenching the stick of the pipe echoed in the fog, then he handed it to me, the end still filtering out the smoke, nodding for me to take it. I did so, and inhaled deep. I didn't know what it was, I didn't need to, it was anything, anything, I needed something.

"But, you...you're something special, miss. Irona, you said your name was? I don't know why, but you're alive, you're allowed, by Thiocyan. Commander Thiocyan...he doesn't like people, he doesn't, but man, if you could hear him sometimes, you'd know why we're here. What, you came to kill us because he's gone insane? He's not insane, he's brilliant, he's driven, he's what a human can only aspire towards. And, what, you merc's...you come to kill whatever it is that someone else doesn't like. Don't you give two shits what you do, whom you kill, does it even matter? What's the right and wrong in that? Is there any? I don't see any, I don't see anything in your job, I see you a person who would kill those who have the true light, the true salvation, in them. Screw the royalty of Laus, screw the dog Pheraeans, it's all here, in him, in this place. It's truth, it's genius. The man...I can't describe him. Sometimes, he'll grab you, throw you into a wall, and slit your throat, other times he can hug you, and whisper into your ear something unbelievable, something you'd never understand or think of on your own. He once told me if I knew that the only way to preserve life was to freeze it, hold it in the unlivable to secure life, that if is the only truth of life, the middle of it, and man, he's right, he's so right. And, you come, you came here, to this village, to what, to kill him? "

"It's my job."

"You thinkin' someone like me, a Fourth, can't look atcha and see weakness? Your face, dat cut, I know it's fresh, it's not from battle, too clean. You did that, to what, look tough?" I didn't answer, I only looked away. It bloomed to life, I felt it again, the cut on my face.

"I needed to be seen for what I was, not what I seem to be."

"A line we all walk, the truth and what we lie to ourselves 'bout. Thiocyan knows that…he might be able to tell ya."

"Maybe, but, now, I think I just want to talk to him. "

"You can't talk to him now, he's gotta be alone. He showed himself to you, that's enough. He's out, with his people, with himself, you gotta wait, friend, gotta wait. You're only alive because he's lettin' you, I dunno why, but he is. I'm just here to help out, be a little guide, y'know, but you'll see, you'll understand. You can't kill Thiocyan, he's more than a man, he's something more, you can't kill him." He was nearly babbling. We were interrupted, a small boy of the village. He had shaggy, long blonde hair, hiding a smiling face and a light voice, calling "Sir Nitrat, Sir Nitrat!". Nitrat leaned down, talking in his ear, then scurried him back to the village, down the small slope over-looking the myriad of huts. "Go see your friend, talk. You've got time, and I've got to do something as well," he said, twitching his eyes to the village, as if to urge me. I stood, turning on the soft grass, walking back down the hill as the boy ran back up with his siter in his hand, a smile blazing across his face. I heard Nitrat talking to both of them as I left. "Now, you what? Oh, right. . . you wanted to know that story. Well, ya see. . . it was cold, bitter that day..."

I left them alone, proceeding back to the village. I don't know why I didn't just turn, run out, leave, avoid death. Who cared about Raven? He deserved whatever he had coming, I guess, but I couldn't leave. Something magnetized me, polarized me, grabbed me and pulled me in, without me totally fighting it. I guess I was more curious as to why events had come out like this than to fight the flow, just go along with it, fall down the hill to reach the bottom without grabbing onto a single root in the hill.

I knew I was in Chlonir, though. I knew this is where the Fourth Regiment of the Third Laus was. The pristine setting, the overwhelming growth, life, was offset, a dichotomy, a contrast. Bodies were everywhere; Pheraeans, buried Lauans, villagers, it was horrible. They were decomposing on the side of the beaten path, waste laden in the corners. They were charred on the pikes in the center of the town square, the burned pyres leaving haggard jaws screaming in divine agony, their bones left to carry out their sentence on the mortal plain. Armor of Pheraeans lined the houses, pinned to the thatch walls. Some kids ran in front of me, each having on an overly-large Pheraean helmet, clanking and rustling along their heads, screaming that they were Commander Thiocyan. The eyes of the heads, ran through on the tops of small arrows, laden as posts for the village, followed me as I walked in. They seemed to whisper amongst themselves, rumors, laughing at me, their silent solace an infinite void for the depth of mind, mind not able to even conceive simple basics, and yet, they, uninhibited by life, time, they could laugh at me, scorn me. Those damned heads...

I walked to the house I thought Raven was in. I was being watched, by everyone, just looking at me go by. A soldier sat on the porch of one house, using his dagger to shave his face, slow and methodical. He wasn't wearing a shirt, showing his hairy, messy chest, glistening in the moisture, just as he would wipe his knife on his pant leg and go up another side of his rough face. An archer was standing by the front of Thiocyan's hut, leaning back in a chair, lazily enjoying the weather. He watched me, too, and if I made a single move at him, he could put an arrow through my eye in less than a moment. I knew their power, their strength, and didn't tempt it, I could feel it, and they let me exist. I found...a degree of strength in resignation, not rebellion.

It smelled like slow death in there. The light filtered in from the front, in such a slothful way as the demeanor of everyone else in the small village. The ground was illuminated in a small divot the size of the door, as if to say "follow this path and no further, for you digress into the heart and soul of darkness, and what it may carry". I stood there, in the doorway, looking to the interior. The smell, the rotten and horrid scent of something dead, dying, pungent, metallic, filled my nostrils. I didn't wince, despite not liking the scent. I didn't enjoy it, but I didn't have to be so weak as to show that I didn't, I just knew I didn't. I finally could make that distinction, between what I thought and what I did.

"You want to be here with yer friend, gal? " a rough voice said. I nodded. Two figures emerged from the darkness, walking past me and out into the village. They were both large, burly men, crooked in their smile and eyes, but not exactly wrong. Their hands were laced in blood, their fingernails portraying a deep-rooted dirt and rotten flesh. They both passed, reeking of what you'd expect the moment you died to smell like. I turned to the darkness, trying to find something, but saw nothing. Instead, I just stepped forward, unflinching, into that darkness, that opaque vacancy, keeping forward, no hesitation, just walking until I found something. I finally found something: a small, wooden table, a flat top, and a mess of metallic items. Next to it was a coat, obviously Raven's, lying discarded on the ground with the rest of his clothes. My probing fingers moved back to the table, found the items to be wet and sharp. I brought my finger to my mouth: blood. The dry, copper taste stung; it was warm.

"So...what have you seen of me now?" Raven said. I didn't need to see him to know. I knew he was there, I knew his smell, I knew his voice. I turned to the darkest corner of the room, approaching. My outstretched hands found his torso, then moved up, feeling his neck and face. He was sweating or bleeding, either way, my hands slid over him effortlessly. He was hanging, strung up over some winch, his hands bound, his feet also tied together. They tortured him. "Go on…release me, we'll get outta here," he coughed.

"Where to?"

"I have this friend...he owns a monastery, he's a priest, nice guy. Lucius is his name, he'll give us shelter. "

"You'll be hunted," I said, monotone, feeling his lips between my fingers. They were puffed, and I pushed harder, hearing him whine. He had been beaten, severely, cut, bashed. "You're not going to kill Thiocyan, and you know that Laus will hunt you, put out a mark on you, imprison you."

"We can be safe with Lucius!" he gasped, squirming from his suspended position. "Let me go, we'll escape! Screw Chlonir, screw this hit, we gotta get out alive!"

"No."

"Why not?" he coughed, rough and hoarse. I could tell he had been broken; his voice had no poignancy or arrogance. It was defeated, burned, hacked to pieces. He seemed to be lucky to be able to still speak, not happy to be arrogant and foolishly garrulous, with whatever hidden intellect in his words. He was scared.

"Why would I want to help you, a miserable bastard?" I said. I was happy, I was smiling, a maddeningly, viral feeling overcoming me. "Did you think that...acts had no repercussion? Wrong came without right?" I could see his face contort, he was horrified, and he had seen something new in his words. I let my anger out. I was smiling, purely ecstatic. My hands ran over his body again, scratching and searching for what wounds they had given him. I found a deep slice on each of his forearms, I found his chest a grave-yard of small slices and stab holes, and I found his face puffed, bloated, bruised. I enjoyed every minute.

I dug my fingers into each arm of his, ripping through his flesh. I felt the blood pound between my fingers, leaking out. He was screaming, and I dug in further, mashing my fingers, feeling around, getting inside of him like he got into me. Finally, I ripped my fingers from each of his bloody forearms, his body convulsing, his haggard gasps and unbridling screams starting to subside to incomprehensible sobs. He started howling, crying, his tears dropping idly to the floor with the dull tap of the wet descent. He was breathing hard, sobbing, his chest rising and falling with contorted shakes and shudders.

I found a small knife on the table, and I brought it over to his body, rubbing the blunt side along him. He pleaded; he said something I didn't listen to, lost amidst the jarring cries and nondescript pleas. The misnomer was that nobody was stopping me. He was loud, screaming, yelling for help, something, Saint Elimine, but no one appeared. I was thankful. I stabbed the tip of the small knife into his gut, twisting. It wasn't deep, just skin level, but I knew it hurt. The flesh peeled back, the fibers tearing and the blood dropping out like a buried treasure. His entire body jumped, he squealed, crying, screaming in the darkness, the heart of darkness. I left the knife in, watching him breathe harder. He was in pain, I enjoyed it, I loved it. He convulsed, the knife falling out, clunking with a slap on the ground.

"Oh…Elimine…Priscilla…ahh!" He kept moaning, screaming, yelling out. He kept calling for his sister, over and over.

"What do you want of her, hmm?" Every time I asked, I would slice him more, his entire body jumping, flinging back around, considering he was tied, feet and hands. "Do you want to be justified with her, feel your good in her? What would she think of the things you've done? Answer me! Show me your justification, or I'll rip it from you, rip it from you with my bare hands! It must be somewhere in these guts, show me!" He continued moaning, repeating her name. "Priscilla!" I mocked, "Priscilla!"

I grabbed his face, holding his bleeding, bruised, sobbing life in both of my palms. His lips were linked in a few lines of saliva, his cheeks bloody and puffed, along with both eyes. I kept one hand cupping his face; the weight of his hanging head in it, then reeled back with my fist, launching an unknown number into him. I punched him, over and over, until I was tired and his sobs and screams had died into guttural, liquid gurgles. I was leaning on both of his barren shoulders, holding myself up by his flesh, both of my fingernails dug into his back. I was tired, I was worn out and completely gone. Colors fluctuated in front of my eyes, my legs were about to give out, but I kept standing. I was sucking in air, but I was smiling, I was glad. The thick blood ran down my hands, onto my shirt and across my face. I don't know if he could even be considered to have a face anymore, but it didn't matter, I would end it. But, I leaned in close, pulling myself up by his body, hearing his whimper as I did, the broken and tortured plea of something that knows it is dying.

"Do you think this is right? Wrong? What would those stars think? Would they judge me evil, vile, bad...or me just? What consequence do I have? Where is the man who can answer you, one you admire? What am I, Raven? Find your answer," I whispered in rough syllables, gasping in-between. I stumbled to the tray, and picked up another utensil. I walked over, I was going to slit his throat, end it. My entire body was focused on holding myself up, my hand grabbing his firm muscle and taut, rigid body to balance itself, the other haggardly making its way to his throat.

"Stop, we need him." I turned, and I saw Nitrat standing in the door. "We've given you long enough, but you can't have his life. That belongs to the Commander. He wants to meet you." I turned back to the darkness, looking at this shrouded face. I couldn't see anything, not my work, not what I had done, only the sounds, smells, tastes, and feelings. My feet shuffled around, slipping on the copious amounts of blood, feeling a few bits of torn flesh kicked out of the way as I walked back. I dropped the knife, the dry clang of it distant in my mind. Raven whimpered more, his lungs contracting into some feral cry, some merciful plea. I walked to Nitrat, into the light, then looked down at my hands. I saw what I had done now, what I looked like.

My rusty hair was plastered to my face, dyed a deeper, more vital red, stinking like the meat of a rotting animal. My hands, my body, were covered in the blood, small splashes of flesh lingering in the caked-on gore. I licked my lips, feeling something small move. It was a maggot. I looked back, the darkness, I wonder what he, Raven, looked like. I didn't care, or did I? Was it right of me, was it wrong? I had done something which had no bearing on either...it was right for what he did to me, but what I did, I tortured him like pulling the wings from a fly...was it worth it? How could I ever tell myself some way to think it was good or just? I couldn't, I had done something entirely worthless, evil, pure evil. And, I think I felt good about it. I don't know if I would have killed him, I might have, I don't know, I couldn't decide.

Nitrat led me, considering my dizzy state, me leaning on his outstretched arm, almost like a courtship. We entered Thiocyan's hut a moment later, the disenchanted whispers of the villagers, gathered in front of their houses. I looked at them from my bobbling head, unable to speak, move, think, just covered in blood and sinew. They wondered, what were the screams? What happened? Did I do it? Was I tortured? Who had I tortured? They knew half the answers, and the other half they could infer, but I just stumbled. I even fell to the ground, the soft grass welcoming me, wiping the blood from me in small slices. Nitrat picked me up again, nearly carrying me inside to Thiocyan. As I entered, I felt myself going back into the darkness, unable to know if I could once again decide what to do, besides my base, primal, feral instinct. I was soon shone that a few candles were lit, veiling the darkness in a small counter of light, but a very dim, distinct one. I was dumped on the hide of a lion, or something like it, motionless for a few moments, my hands grabbing the fur and my face rubbing into it. Nitrat left me, not saying a word, walking back out, the thuds of his boots vibrating in the floorboards.

"Dis is the end of yer journey, all right," Thiocyan said. I knew it was him; the voice that sounded like even the moon would whimper and hide under the mountains at a threat. "You came...to kill me? "

"Yes," I whispered, unable to open my eyes.

"Do ya know why?"

"Yes."

"Ya know 'cause we left Laus, ya know 'cause we lost some of our men, ya know 'cause we murdered those fools, da Fifth of tuh Fifth, and ya know 'cause ya were hired to know, but do ya got half a shit in your head as to why we're wanted dead? " I didn't have the answer. "Look, Miss Irona, look at this man, here. Lemme get a light..." He reached, a small clunk noise as he shuffled it about the ground, then brought the object to one of the dim candles, a stick of wood with a rag tied around top, catching fire, gilded in quivering flame, shivering in the shrill wind from the door. The place instantly illuminated, showing the cob-webs, dark corners that seemed to be growing and breathing. He waved it over to the side of the room, a small bed there, a figure under the sheets. "The only survivor of our liddle battle five days ago. Say 'hi' to yer friend, Bario."

The man was dipped in the small luminosity, letting his nose and carved-out holes of his eyes glow, but the definite shape of his body slid into the shadows. He didn't move, he was still. I thought him a cadaver until he shuddered, grunting, then returned to a motionless corpse state. Thiocyan reached down, his discombobulated hand, a contortion of skin tones and lines, pulled back his sheet. Bario's entire gut was wrapped around and over with cloth, still bleeding through some wound on the center of his torso. Thiocyan leaned down to Bario's face, wiping the perspiration off, cupping his face like a mother as the man whined, contorted, a guttural sound, like a crying baby. He whispered something into his ear, then covered him with his sheet again.

"He's a real Fourth now, y'know," Thiocyan mumbled, standing up, looking over him. "Twenty-seven years old...maybe the last Fourth Regiment soldier, ev-uh. Who knows, but...he finally made it. Wouldn't yer comrades be happy fer you, Bario? Vinadium, ha...he'd probably ask what you're living for, why you're still alive. I dun give a shit, but whatever it is, you're here. You're one of us, brudder." Thiocyan looked up at me, still caressing the man's head. "You know how you become a Fourth?" I had heard rumors, legends, you had to die and come back, greater than you were, cheating death, but I said no. This man, Commander Thiocyan, his presence was like a drug itself. Time slowed, every word lingered, the smell wasn't pungent or rotten, it was him, it was all a manifestation of him, his pure essence, his pure self. This place...breathed him, vitalized him.

"You gotta die, be caught in yer 'nemy's blade. When y'are, ya sit there, bleeding out, dyin', and you look. That battlefield is gone, ya look around, and you don' see your buddy's head next to you, you're not hurting, but ya alive, ya movin', and you see dat guy, standing there. He wants ya to go, go off to the other world, meet your maker, but ya say no, and he's hurt. You insulted him, and it's genuine, he's hurt by yer refusal, and sends you back, but ya remember, next time, you'll say 'sorry, I am sorry for hurting you before, now, we'll go, we'll go'. I've seen him over a dozen times, and I think, maybe, when I finally do go to him, he won't let me run with him, to where ever, since I've denied him so many times. It's, I dunno, I even feel bad about it. Does that make sense? That's being a Fourth, something Elibe'll never know again. "

"And, what? You come...to kill us, to kill me. Because why, hmm? 'Cuz some stupid Sir of the Royal Court of the Cantons of Laus wants me dead? Tell me, gal, Irona, did you think about what the reason is for me to be killed is?"

"Because someone paid me to do it. Do I need to know more?"

"For a merc', no. For a human, yes. How do you justify killin' all those pe'ple, Fey? By Saint Elimine? "

"...I know how I used to do it, not anymore. I used to think doing it was a measure of right or wrong."

"Right and wrong? Let me tell you something, Fey, right and wrong dun matter. What is right? How do you, wouldja, define right? "

"Now? I don't know. Before? I'd define it...as something which I did with good cause. Anything I did, I could perceive it, twist it, to be right. I couldn't live knowing I had done something irreversibly evil, bad. I'd tell myself, somehow, that what I did, it wasn't so bad, it was good in some way. Someone would think I did well, somewhere, and maybe at the end, Saint Elimine, she'd realize what I did was good in the end. I did whatever I did to the end of something glorious, it would negate all the bad. Now, I don't know."

"Let me tell ya something, Fey. Why do ya thunk you have a right and a 'rong? Do yuh even have an idea on who made dem, why? I do, and I can tell ye how I saw through it. Five days ago, we broke from Laus, after our incee-dent with the Peg'sus Knight. We realized no 'right' existed, not if what happened could. Y'see...we fought that little battle, lost six men, and here, Bario, only survivor. She left, escaped, and we were left with the dead. We tried to return to Caelin wid the bodies, dragging dem behind us like the carcasses of meat tuh market. But, at the top of Caelin, a regiment ov archers were there. We were told we weren't allowed back in unteel our fourteen days were up, our mission, alive or not. We realized that we were being kept to die, and fer what? No good reason, not a single one."

"So, we left, we moved. Once those Caelin bastards realized we were ain't comin' back, they sent Fifth of Fifth after us, tried to kill us. We couldn't leave, we had to be killed. Those fools, the damn stupid fools, dey ran up on us and tried doing sumthin', but all dey got were murdered, completely murdered, on Lauan fields no less. I dun' like killin' me own countrymen, but they weren't no diff'rent than a 'nemy at dat point, jus' someone in my way. Dey can't kill us with deir own, we're too good. So, we left them on dose plains, the dead Fifth of the Fifth, we came to this village, and been here since. But, do you get the reasons behind it?" I didn't, he continued.

"Right...wrong...they're subjective. What right did we fight fer? Tuh moral right dat left our brothers dead, wit' wives and children at home that would never be allowed to bury dem as the c'yotes and vultures fed on their bodies out in the plains ov Caelin? I fought for a country I believed in, to protect the people dat lived dere. But, I was instantly turned an 'nemy by what, politics? The 'right' is determined by a civilization, and those in power. Here's the true answer, girl, right and wrong don' matter. Yer right, your wrong...what do they eventually do for yuh? They prohibit you, they only let you do hal'v of what you want, dinking the other half is wrong. The only wrong you can do is deny what ya want. "

"But, I think ya know that. I heard you earlier with that other merc'...I don't know what he did tuh you, but you took no mer-say. I didin' want you to kill him thaugh, no, but ya did yer job. Didn't it feel good? Didn't it? Makin' him hurt, bleed, rippin' him apart with your fingernails? I know it felt good, I know what it feels like. Is that wrong? To any civilized man of any c'urt, but they don't know it, they don't know the truth, what is truly great and what is evil. It's because they dun exist." He smiled, dipping the torch into a small bowl of water, hearing it fizzle. He dropped the stick, picking up the bowl, and then sat back down on his own mattress. A rag was inside of the water, and he pulled it out, squeezing it, then started rubbing his head, his other hand holding a razor. He moved it up from the back, to his eyes, following the rag with his razor, the dry and crumbling noise like an avalanche in the shrill silence.

"Have ya ever considered haven true freedom? Freedom from the opinions of others, from what they think may be just or unjust? What about the opinion of yerself? But, what did you expect, coming to a place like this, to find me? You think you're an assassin? "

"I'm a mercenary."

"You're neither!" he seethed. "You're the lapdog ov a society which wouldn't pay to those who would die for it--bleed the blood that we've laid for dem! You're like a dog that would eat the scraps at a table, not dependent if the weasel or the hey-row who gave it to ya! What justification, in any act, has there when such pagan idolatry to a man, another human, flesh, breathin' man of some nation's throne, matters? None at all! Do you think me mad? Insane? Does that mark on me still hold true? Could you justify killin' me! I'm worthy of death, oh, how I know it, but what reason have you to kill me? Without a reason, you're as worthless as a dog, a damned dog. Your 'right', your 'wrong'. . . if yuh can give me dat, then I'll gladly let you kill me."

"May I ask something, sir?" I timidly questioned.

"Uh-huh," he grunted.

"What do you think…of consequence?"

"Consequence? I'll tell yuh what I think…I think that whatever ya do, be it just or injust, has no consequence. Action is what madders, that's all. You may think that killin' me has a consequence, ya be killed by my Fourth, but is it true? No, nah, not ever. It's all actions that follow suit, no reaction or cons'quence. You think that, then ya a fool. If ya can believe deed goes with blessing and sin with damnation, yer blind!"

"But…why? How can you live in a life without bearing upon action?"

"Simple, miss. You live by what you believe is right and wrong, no depending on what ya hear from someone else, or what may come ov it. That's all anyone can ever do, what they believe. Didja think yer face would make you look better by cutting it?" I was shocked he knew, but didn't make a sound. "Ya only look like a fool, unintentional consequence, or perhaps, positive. Consequence is as subject as right or wrong, and if ya think action has real retribushon, then yer as stupid as a dog. There's nothing to judge you, not on this earth, to make you think consequence shoul' madder." He sighed, long and hard, rubbing his head with the water for a few silent moments.

"Then, what's the point of even living? No consequence, no right or wrong, how can you even justify breathing? Is there a point to living?" Thiocyan stopped rubbing his nearly-bald scalp, looking up at me. I stared into his dark, infinite black eyes. He smiled, the contorted and scarred lips peeling back to reveal a set of glistening teeth, glimmering in the darkness.

"Why live? Why breathe, why do anything, Fey? Why even bring yerself out here, to Chlonir, to kill me? Can ya answer dat yerself? I don't think anybody can. A self-serving life…that's sad, but a life that has worth to it, that's good. Ya wonderin'…how is worth possible without right, wrong, or consequence? Because of what you do fer others. What have ya done, hmm? You've made that otha merc' scream like a girl. You've made me think, you've come to my village, and fer what? This is your life, the moments you define yerself by. You live without right and wrong to define it for yerself, so that when you die, you know that you were either an evil bein', or a just, righteous one. You judge yerself, not Elimine, not the heavens. And, ya gotta know, be truthful, you will find the truth, find what is worth in your life. You find a reason to live through justifying yer own life." He sighed, long and hard, leaning back, closing his eyes.

"Be gone," he whispered, setting down the bowl and walking over to Bario. He sat down next to him, whispering into his ear more, saying something I didn't know and couldn't hear. I nodded, did as he said, and left. It was hard standing, but I did, leaning on the walls until I could thrust myself outside. I tried walking down the steps, breathing in fresh air once again, turning to look into the darkness where I knew Thiocyan was, somewhere, and then I fell. I don't remember, but I passed out. Maybe I was knocked out, I don't know, but I was asleep. Some time later, it was night, the same day, my fingers still had Raven's flesh under them, and I was groggy. I would soon see more, something that brought me to life, brought me to where I stand now. Hours ago, how could it have only been so short a time ago before I stood here, right where I am, ready to kill my mark?

I was propped up in a chair, a wooden one that was rough and un-sanded. I stretched out, getting a few splinters in my forearms as the rubbed against the chair. I didn't care, they didn't hurt. I looked around. It was night, pure night. I had missed dusk, and someone had grabbed me, put me in this chair. I heard the light crackle of a fire, the popping of the wood inside, and the laughs of a few men. My head hung low, sweeping side to side until I could find the energy to fully awaken. I turned and saw a bunch of soldiers sitting together. They hadn't weapons, but only normal clothes on, each sitting in a circle, laughing, telling stories, each with a mug of local brew inside, and having a good time. I turned back, looking at the fire. It was the central pyre for the village, the charred and pruned pikes stabbed into the ground, a fresh set of embers lit under them.

"Ah, looky here, girlie's awake," one of the Knights said, turning to look at me. I just craned my head, hanging like a ball on a chain, glaring at him with burning eyes. They still burn, I don't know why, but they hurt. Was I crying? He walked over and sat down next to me. I knew who it was, it was Nitrat. He opened my palm and set the rim of a glass of beer in my hand and then shut it over it. "Drink up, merc'. Ya know what's happening tonight? A celebration," he whispered, leaning close to my ear. I was leaning back in the chair, my head attached by a string, floating off into some blue oblivion. I wasn't there, I wasn't awake, I was hardly conscious.

"Get ov-ah here and finish yer story, Nitrat!" one of the soldier yelled.

"I shot him in the back of the damn skull, the end! Shuddap and find yer own story, Lithior!" They all booed him, chuckled, and went back to talking in their circle as he stayed next to me, pulling up a chair to continue talking. "You know, you're alive, because he likes you. He wanted you to witness this tonight, to see this. But, you, you coming here, I think I realized something. He's not all in the right mind, he's not going to keep going for long. Something broke, something snapped, five days ago. He's hanging on by a thread, and I think it's unraveling. What're they gonna say when he dies, friend? Do you think they'll say what he is, back in Laus? That he was a genius, a brilliant leader, and a man amongst insects? Or, will they remember him as this insane man who went outside the jurisdiction of his regiment, killed the men of Laus who tried to stop him, what would they remember him as? Oh, here we go," he said, motioning to the center of the village. I turned my head as best I could, my chin leaning on my chest.

Two soldiers dragged something out of one house, something unmoving and heavy. It took me a moment, then I realized, it was Raven. His young, lithe body was wrapped in wounds, contusions, caked on blood, agony, the very visual image of pain. But, nothing looked broken, just flesh wounds. They dropped him on the ground, looking to another man on the far side of the village. I looked over, and there he was, Commander Thiocyan. He was sitting in a larger chair, for his girth and might, two girls, young and innocent ones, in each of his arms. He nodded, smiling, each girl rubbing her hands and body over his chest and body, public in their sexual deviance. The soldiers nodded, then picked up Raven's body as a third soldier walked forward to the fire, grabbing out one of the pikes with a gloved hand.

They worked quick, chaining Raven's body to the metal spear. He screamed, snapping out of whatever passed out state he was in, showing some vitality in his battered body. It must have burned, been searing hot. I could smell the burnt flesh, something like a mix between the smell of a cut man's throat and a wet beast. They moved to put him in the fire, all three Knights using their might to stick the sharp end into the ground, and then raised him above the flames. I needed energy, I had to do something, say something, but I couldn't. I was immobile, too tired too worn.

Then, he screamed out, eyes bulging from his head. He was in agony, in extreme pain. He had suffered enough.

"Stop!" I yelled, standing up. I exploded. It was hard for me to balance, I felt like collapsing, falling through the boards and into the core of the planet. The three Knights, admiring their work at the man set above the fires turned to look at me, confused. The circle of Fourth Regiment soldiers, drinking and laughing, was silenced, turning slowly to connect their vehement eyes with me. Nitrat even stood, hazardously, staring at me. The few people of the village, children sleeping in parent's arms, and the old men and women leaning on canes, contacted me with their silent glares. Yet, I stood firm, matching each glance. Something was inside of me, a demon, something that wouldn't quit, despite the pain, the exhaustion, it continued. The three Knights looked to Thiocyan who nodded, taking the body down from the pike.

Raven fell to the ground, rolling in the grass to put out the few pieces of flaming clothing, or what was left of his tattered robes. His body was bleeding fresh again, the scabbed over wounds leaking a vital red again onto the tainted, blue-grass from the moonlight. I walked up to him, his eyes scanning over me, afraid, cowering. I reached my hand down, and he balled up like a child. After a moment, he realized I was trying to help him up, and took it cautiously, standing, hardly able, still whimpering.

"Go. Wrap your arms, get your coat from that hut," I said, pointing to where he was being tortured. It was in a pile next to where he was tortured, I remembered. "Go away, get out of here, never return. Go to that monastery, heal up, but Laus will come for you. I never want to see you again." The Knights murmured, looking to Thiocyan. One of them unsheathed their sword, ready to stab me, or Raven, in the back, I don't know, but he was stopped, the commander's growl enough to stifle his movements. Raven stumbled forward, his body steaming in the moist night, ran to the hut, and then exited, falling into the fog and his pounding feet heard long into the night. I turned, watching him go into the unknown, and then looked at Thiocyan. He smiled, coughing for a moment, a brutal and violent one, something deep and wicked. Both of the girls left him on his command, and the Knights all stayed their weapons and scorns on his command. Then, I approached him.

Each step was a living, breathing moment. Every blade of grass…my bear, calloused feet would work through seemed to propel me further ahead, towards his massive figure. I felt as if I stole the breath out of every one else's lungs, each deep breath I took alive, vivid, and vital. There was no sod but the crackling of the fire. Each step up to his hut echoed in eternity, the fog an innumerable amount of on-lookers with the immediate village and Knights. Finally, I stood in front of him, his smiling face looking at me. He was smoking a long pipe, but removed it, clicking his teeth, and puffing out some smoke through his nsoe, only to suck it back into his mouth.

"What's the justification?"

"I don't have any," I whispered back, grabbing his sword. It was on his belt, the hilt aimed up at the sky, but he let me unsheathe it without twitching, holding out his sword. I put the tip to his throat, and looked into his black eyes. They were emotionless, without reason, moral, cause.

And, here I am. Where have I come...to be here, at this moment? Can I kill this mark? Just push, go, push your hand forward, murder him, take the life of your mark. He wants to die, he has to, with what he said earlier. He isn't flinching, he's not afraid, I think he wants me to do it.

"Do it, if you please, I'll not stop you. But, ugly, yes. I know, it is all so ugly. But, I ask you, can ya find a single trace in ya, enty-uh body as to say that this barbarism, that these acts, do not have the faintest trace of response from you, merc'? What have you seen in my village? Joy, fear, sorrow, devotion, val-ah, rage, but truth, that you know 'uv. Truth, you've found that, haven't you?" he says to me, his words lip in a whisper from a scarred and heavy face. He leans forward, shading his face in the dim moonlight, revealing a world-weary and injured face, eternally marked with the exploits of his past. Burn marks, a pierced cheek, a split lip, scars rippling from one side of his face to the other, and his eyes, removed of luster, but any luster, two distinct levels of luster. He takes another drag from his pipe, then sets it down on the side of the chair's armrest, letting it filter out of his nose and circle around him like a pungent halo.

"I'll tell you what I've found," I whispered, leaning in closer with the blade. "I've found that right and wrong...they don't exist, you were right. You were absolutely right. There's nothing stopping me from killing you, from doing anything I want. No consequence but what I make for myself. Should I, by what some person says? No...I should do what I feel is right, what I feel is wrong. That's what you've shown me. Raven, he didn't deserve to die. It was right to kill him, but no, I wouldn't allow it. And, here I am, to kill you. Am I justified? If I believe I can be, I am. "

"Bravo, Fey," he said, as if to mention it, standing up. He let the blade stay on his throat as he stood, looking down at me. "You've come here, and what have you f'und? Justification. Now, can you act on yer justification? You have found that in your heart, in duh heart of every man, lies that internal evil, the one none of us can deny. Do as you please, do as ya wish, to your full extent. No one can tell ye what you do is wrong...it's all subjective. Do you do right? And if you do in your eyes, then I'll not stop you. Kill me, if you justify it." He turns, walks into the darkness of his hut, and I follow him in, sword still in my hands.

I can't see him, but I know he won't fight back. I swing, feeling flesh, the splatter of warm blood. I pull back, swing again, then stab, throwing my entire body and soul into it. I keep going until my entire body, every piece of my being, is unified in action. I am justified. I am justified. I keep slashing, feeling the blood drip down my hands, my face, finally ripping my sword out once more, the liquid gurgle and smell of flesh fills my nostrils. The final breath escapes his lungs, the monstrous growl, formed into some semblance of words.

"There's no consequence to being justified, Fey..." I breathe hard, like an animal. Then, I turn, and exit into the glimmering moonlight. On the porch, the eyes of every Knight look at me, they're horrified, pale faces set upon frail, broken bodies. I don't care, I breathe harder, I scream. I screamed out like some wolf, to the moon, to the farthest reaches of the lands, and then I drop to a knee, the sword falling from my hands, stained in Thiocyan's blood next to me. I'm crying, the blood and tears mixing and falling from me, wiping along my body.

Nitrat walks up to me. I expect that he's going to kill me, put an arrow in my head, stab me, something. I see his boots below me, and I realize, he's not moving. I was justified in doing what I did, what ever comes next, I don't care, I know that what I did was worth it, it was worthy, there's no remorse. I don't need to explain anything, I know what I did, and I can live with it, it's pure, it's justified.

He helps me up, putting my shoulder over his neck, and drags me away. My body falls onto a mattress, looking up at the ceiling, the thatched roof leaking in the bright moonlight. I wasn't killed; I'm not dead, not being tortured. I look at the doorway, and I see Nitrat's lanky figure looking back, then he closed the door. Locked in the darkness.

No consequence, no right and wrong. I found justification in belief of myself. I found justification. Justification.


End file.
